RJH January-June of 2011 Part 3

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The Challenge of Neohumanism
by rjosephhoffmann


We will soon be marking the first anniversary of Paul Kurtz’s  Neo-Humanist Statement, a charter for a way forward in the study and application of human values at a global level.
My own view of the new Institute for Science and Human Values is that, given Paul Kurtz’s intellectual restlessness, it was bound to happen.
The Institute is not so much a new creation but the culmination of his assessment of where other organizations have fallen short or have been driven by short-term thinking to harp on one string. The reduction of the humanist message to an ever-narrowing vision was not just unacceptable; it was the contradiction of the full-bodied humanism he had worked for throughout his career.
For Kurtz, this vision entailed two separate steps: the rejection of parochialism, exceptionalism (“nationalisms”),  and dogmatism.  (All three ideas are laid out and laid bare in the Statement.) And second, an honest evaluation of what we can do to create individuals and institutions that promote moral excellence.  We cannot move forward until we faithfully examine where we are and where we have gone wrong–where we stand in relation to what Bacon called the “idols of the tribe.”
Kurtz was touting the inevitability of the global community and the need for a new ethical regime to support it before many academics–certainly before most politicians–knew what the word  meant.  To understand this, his own intellectual biography comes into play.
In 1977 the profoundly smart American historian, Henry Steele Commager published a book entitled The Empire of Reason.  The book grew out of the intellectual climate of Columbia University where he taught from 1936 to 1956.  Columbia had become famous for either producing or giving refuge to the gurus of liberal democracy, loosely bound together in a confederacy devoted to the liberating power of the humanities and the power of ideas to change society.  In the American Century, Jacques Barzun, Joseph Campbell, John Dewey, Mark van Doren, Mortimer Adler, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr (Union), Moses Finley, Sidney Hook, John Herman Randall,  and Lionel Trilling–to stop only for breath–walked in the shadow of Lady Columbia.  Not to know at least some of the names in that list means that you may have missed the formative debate about the role of education in American democracy, one of the greatest debates in the history of the Republic. (That debate is still going on, by the way, and the ones least able to participate in it, tragically, are our legislators.)

Trilling
Paul Kurtz took away from his War experience in Europe and his graduate days at Columbia a staunch faith in the capacity of democratic institutions to make people’s lives better in a world that was changing quickly: on the one hand, bringing people closer together through communication and, especially, education, but also into strained alliances and sudden conflicts, as a result of global shrinkage.

Post-war Europe: Boy eating lunch of bread and lard
To say in 1950 that America was a “shining city upon a hill” wasn’t what it meant when Ronald Reagan was handed the phrase for the GOP in 1987 .  The expression was first used, symbolically, of “America” by John Winthrop (quoting Matthew 5:14-16) in 1648, then by John Kennedy in 1961.  It did not mean that America was better and brighter than everyone else’s city, but that it embodied vision and hope, ideals of social liberty and equality, the absence of which, from the American intellectual perspective had caused two European wars and the deaths of millions.
I remember hearing the philosopher Isaiah Berlin in Oxford in 1986, responding to an edgy question about his oft-professed love for America at a time when America’s ante was especially low in Europe and Reagan-era anti-Americanism was practically a school of philosophy in it own right. Berlin after a pause said to the youngish, smuggish interviewer, “You weren’t around then.  You can’t imagine how unbelievably dark Europe seemed to us then.  The only light there was was coming from across the sea.”  It was that kind of perception that a whole generation of Americans brought back with them from Europe: that they had done something worthy.
The phrase that had circulated widely among New York intellectuals in the 1950′s, the immediate post-War decade, was the term “practical wisdom”(phronesis, φρόνησις) a classical ideal (especially in Aristotle’s thinking) that relates to how the knowledge (sophia) we acquire is translated into the good life through thoughtful action.  Werner Jaeger had given the term and the idea currency in  a book called Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (1939-44). A pragmatist by temper, Commager thought the riddle about what was good for the mind, as mind, and what is good for the soul as virtue had been solved in the early American experience, where the story of the past was not valued for its defining and enduring permanence (as in Europe) but as a cautionary tale:
“While Europe looked toward ancient, stagnant civilizations like China’s, America looked at a horizon. True, the Old World had Goethe, Priestley, Kant – but the reality was that cities were put to the torch, nobles rode heedless over the fields of peasants, the Irish cotters starved to death….”
Americans, with “no King, no Court, no aristocracy, no body of laws, no professional army, no Established Church, no history, no tradition, no usable past” were required to invent a working society from the bottom up. Thomas Jefferson is exalted as the native philosophe embodying this development–a man who knew what the philosophes knew, but did not waste his time drinking coffee in the salon after he knew it.
Commager, as an historian, expressed the uniqueness of the “American way” in his own hyperboles, of course: The enlightenment in Europe,  was essentially theoretical rather than practical because it did not end in social or political amelioration (almost no European scholars agreed with him). But many of his conclusions about America wanting to create “a more perfect union” and references to the “pursuit of happiness” (not merely economic prosperity) were translated into important and defining differences between old Europe and young America in the early republic. Ideas like righting injustice, affirming human worth and diginity, and seeing government as a benevolent partner rather than an overlord in helping people to find the good life were there from the beginning. For all the hyperbole, Commager had managed to capture something important about the native humanism of the American spirit, which was always threatened not by a Europe emerging out of the dust of war but by nativism and isolationism, especially in its raw, loud, religious forms.

These were affirmative and optimistic ideas, coming soon after long centuries of religious warfare in Europe.  The general sense that religion could not be trusted to secure the enlightenment of men and women whose new fundamental identity was “citizen” and not “parishioner” or “layman”  was also there from the beginning, and a general distrust of priestcraft, popery, dogma, and supernaturalism is also there from the beginning.
This little bit of history is necessary to explain the background of the Neohumanist Statement.  Most of the names mentioned above would have called themselves “humanists,” or “ethicalists.” A few flirted with, then got disillusioned by, socialism and communism. Some were Jews by family tradition, some were Christians, some would have been reluctant to call themselves anything, other than pragmatists.
They had common concerns about religion in the story of western civilization (the Durants were a special case of this almost zealous commitment), but equally too much aware of the complexities of historical narrative to think that religion was the only problem human beings were likely to face or needed to overcome.  To oversimplify a body of work and thinkers who never formed a “club” (though the New York Intellecuals came close) they seemed instinctively aware that the problems we face are human problems, and to the extent that “religion in society” (a phrase popularized by Reinhold Niebuhr) can be identified as one of those problems, it has human solutions, too.
In his previous work, Paul Kurtz as the offspring of this movement has made the same point: the philosophy he once named “secular humanism” was his way of saying that humanism will always be non-dogmatic and must be naturalistic in its approach to the world.  We are real people, living in real time, dealing with real problems.  The resort to magical thinking is never an option.  We did not “make” this world–it was given to us to explain, interpret, and make our home; and religion is one of the ways in which we have tried to explain it to ourselves.  Now that science has arisen as a better explanation, people will have to judge for themselves, in honesty and charity, what the future of religion is going to be.  Yet in the Statement, this discussion emphasizes kindness and respect rather than hostility for creeds outworn.
But the Question of God, and the matter of religion, cannot dominate our thinking as humanists. Kurtz has written repeatedly that humanism is not atheism: it does not begin there, and it cannot stop there.  If the reality of global civilization is the rapid pace of change, discovery and kaleidoscopic power and economic shift, then there is simply no time to mourn the death of God.  There is too much to do.
Kant (in the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View) once saw a defining element in human nature as its commitment to scientific discovery being out of all proportion to the lifespan, in which questions that were just being asked were not likely to find answers. This he found remarkably unlike the day-to-dayness of animals. It proved to him that even though we struggle to maintain the moral good in a nature that also bends toward “evil,” the good of knowledge drives us on–a temptation in its own right.
That fundamentally affirmative approach to discovery is essential to the neohumanist vision: it is not limited to what we can accomplish in our four score years and ten, but open to what we can begin to do and to learn.  This means that the question of God’s existence or the postulates of religious morality which dominated thought for so long, will not be at the center of the humanist project.
A narrow atheist agenda is as retardant to achieving the good life, as humanism understands that word, as a narrow theistic vision was in the twelfth century.  God no longer stands over us–this reality is not an argument.
And while it will always be important for the humanist to defend this assertion, and to remind the most ardent defenders of the religious world-view that their grip is gone, and that the age of faith is over, the real work is not in re-fighting yesterday’s battles as if they were new ones.
The real work, as Paul Kurtz has again reminded us, is always just ahead.


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Published: March 30, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: humanism : Inquiry : Institute for Science and Human Values : Neo-Humanist Statement : Paul Kurtz : R. Joseph Hoffmann ..
14 Responses to “The Challenge of Neohumanism”

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 Dwight Jones 
 March 30, 2011 at 10:48 pm
“A narrow atheist agenda is as retardant to achieving the good life, as humanism understands that word, as a narrow theistic vision was in the twelfth century.” RJH
So much more than that given here in this masterpiece, such a privilege to read it…I had the temerity to slander the good name earlier, but I think I just morphed into an Oxonian.
In Japan they have a name for guys like this. National Treasures.
Reply
 
 Jonathan Figdor 
 March 31, 2011 at 3:52 am
“A narrow atheist agenda is as retardant to achieving the good life, as humanism understands that word, as a narrow theistic vision was in the twelfth century.” RJH
No offense, but I think this betrays a stunning ignorance of the history of religion’s crimes against humanity. To pretend like the good folks at American Atheists are uncommitted to living the good life is patronizing and obviously false. As a Humanist and an Atheist, I tell you advocacy for both are important.
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 Dwight Jones 
 March 31, 2011 at 9:57 am
@Jonathan: There is no better writer or scholar on the history of religion than RJH, and in this article he is leading the charge for Humanism. You can’t possibly look for more astute advocacy than that. Unless you don’t really care for the Humanist side and are satisfied with lip service to it – which is US/BHA atheism – and precisely his point.
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 Jonathan Figdor 
 March 31, 2011 at 3:56 am
Perhaps ignorance is too strong, but willingness to overlook the fact that religious fundamentalists have resorted to violence to impose their beliefs, while atheists do not (with the obvious exception of totalitarian China, hardly a Jeffersonian Democracy…).
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 March 31, 2011 at 5:58 am
@Jonathan: Do you really think the field (there is one) of history of religion (which includes sociology, psychology and anthropology of religion) overlooks religious fundamentalists’ “crimes against humanity” and that the critique was written by atheists (some of whom teach history of religion)? In my view the serious study of religion has been key in working out why religions turn violent–or for that matter exist at all. That is not a question that is addressed in other religion-specific fields like philosophy of religion, and not something movements like atheism help us much to understand. To call it ignorant just betrays a lack of information.
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 libratheist 
 March 31, 2011 at 6:51 am
‘A narrow atheist agenda is as retardant to achieving the good life, as humanism understands that word, as a narrow theistic vision was in the twelfth century. God no longer stands over us–this reality is not an argument.’ RJH
I am inclined to agree in part, but not entirely. I see atheism as a necessary first step, almost a purification of the mind, removing the tribalism and dogmas of religion so that a truly global humanist project can begin.
However, the fact that ‘God no longer stands over us’ is not self-evident to many people. Indeed, many in positions of political power and social influence do believe that God stands over us, and base their social policies on religious proscriptions against (for instance) homosexuality, or base their environmental policies on the view that Jesus will return soon and the world will end, so we don’t need to save the planet.
As long as these beliefs are held by people in power, we do need a ‘narrow atheist agenda’ to confront and challenge them, just as much as we need a wider humanism. The two are not contradictory but in essence, two sides to the same coin.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 March 31, 2011 at 6:55 am
I like this; but to qualify, the agenda you describe I wouldn’t call “narrow” either.
Reply
 
 Rich Griese 
 March 31, 2011 at 7:51 am
on the political level, we need to get supernaturalism out of politics. It is dangerous for democracy, which is built on “reason”, to be affected by supernaturalism, which is not “reason” based. Once one tells you that their gods want X, “reasoning” is over.
So I agree with much of what you are saying. In fact, I would say, that the political importance is #1. It might be nice for intellectuals to hope that people will become more leaned, and perhaps learn about history, or theology, etc… But, that is a far less importance to me, that the work of making sure that political decisions are not affected by the gods.
So I am for putting the majority of the effort in getting people to abandon supernaturalism, and honestly, I don’t care if they do it for good or bad reasons. I simply want supernaturalism taken completely out of politics however that can be done.
Cheers! RichGriese.NET
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 Dwight Jones 
 March 31, 2011 at 10:24 am
Nationalism, militarism, corruption, and our neglect of the UN – Democracy suffers under them as much as from supernaturalism, I would think. If the idea is to educate politicians, then no tradition equals Humanism for preparing citizens for public office. My own approach is to consider religion a private matter, and to address issues around our species’ governance directly.

 
 steph 
 April 1, 2011 at 1:42 am
I agree with you Dwight. Religion should be, and is, for some people, a private matter, while government and education should be, and is down under, completely free of religion. In an ideal world everyone will lose their theisms and religious rituals. But in the meantime you cannot realistically demolish all these without replacing them with something. I think only secular (humanistic) education in the sciences and logic as well as the arts including histories of atheism, humanism and religious beliefs, can encourage people to adopt reason and find spiritual, or life fulfilment in things like nature, the arts, and human relationships. In a humanist society, I don’t think individual private beliefs need matter so much and education in a secular humanist state will probably eventually dissolve them.
I agree also, that society suffers as much from Nationalism, militarism, and corruption. As you know, George Bernard Shaw said ‘You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.’ I like that.

 
 
 
 steph 
 March 31, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Absolutely brilliantly eloquent and incisive post, thank you. So many reasons to feel inspired. As a fellow bohemian Kiwi, Katherine Mansfield said: “To work — to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do… Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.” Throughout his career Paul has consistently recognised the individuality of human beings within societies as well as the complexities of religious beliefs. It is important to distinguish between the multiplicity and variety of faiths with the horrors of fundamentalisms. This is something that does not seem to be clarified in education. Encouraged by a predominantly fundamentalist religious environment with religiously saturated politics, it is generally not acknowledged by american atheists however learned they might be in other disciplines. The history of religions is sadly not understood.
I like our patron saint of Nottingham, St D.H. Lawrence’s beautifully optimistic and hopeful zest for Zoe: “What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolated salvation of his “soul.” Man wants his physical fulfillment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.” (Apocalypse 1930)
And finally, from the immortal W. H. Auden: “[We] must either fall in love with Someone or Something or fall ill”. I intend to dedicate my faith to humanistic philosophy and the ISHV and help build a better future for humankind and the planet. He also said “nothing can be loved too much, but all things can be loved in the wrong way.”
8X8
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 Scott 
 March 31, 2011 at 11:07 pm
In my thinking I don’t really see a large difference between humanism and religion; both want what’s best for human beings: humanism proceeds from reason, observation and experience, whereas religion proceeds from belief and faith in a higher being. The goal is the same, but choose a different fork in the road.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 1, 2011 at 6:45 am
And I think many religious people would endorse your view of the charitable and philanthropic work of religion as well.
Reply
 
 
 Scott 
 March 31, 2011 at 11:10 pm
addendum: but each choose a different fork in the road.
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The New Oxonian
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Julian Huxley: Why Liberal Theology is Not Enough
by rjosephhoffmann


John Robinson, the bishop of Woolwich, England, in the 1960′s, was not an ordinary Anglican prelate, not even in a country where Anglican bishops are known as atheists in purple gowns. He first became notorious for suggesting that the D.H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover was not only not pornographic but a moral book.
Then, in 1963 he ushered in a movement sometimes called “the new divinity” when he wrote a book exploding conventional images of God as false and suggesting that the biblical images of a petulant and fickle God, in particular, were more  a hindrance than a help to the Christian faith.  He challenged British Christians to consider alternatives to the God-in-the-sky model, especially ones being proposed by theologians like the German-American thinker Paul Tillich (God as “ultimate concern,”)  and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who rejected the objective moral values of the Bible.
In a country where “existential”  theology was not popular and German ideas especially suspect, it was no surprise that Robinson’s suggestions did not immediately catch on.
One sympathetic reader of Honest to God was Julian Huxley, a distinguished embryologist in his right and the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”) by descent.  He independently distinguished himself as a researcher with his first book, on avian ethology. By 1925 he had become Professor of Zoology at King’s College, London, a position he resigned after less than two years to work with G.H. Wells on The Science of Life.
Rejecting T.H.’s legendary “agnosticism” relative to religion Julian preferred to call himself a “humanist,” emphasizing the positive and progressive goals human beings have achieved in their evolutionary march from simple to complex organziations, made possible through the use of language.  He rejected the notion that this progress was “teleological” in the religious sense, but rejected equally the idea that there was an absolute split between religion and science: As he notes in the essay below, “There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion;… I believe that [a] drastic reorganization of our pattern of religious thought is now becoming necessary, from a god-centered to an evolutionary-centered pattern.”
Ethics, Huxley believed, was at the heart of the progression;  ”it largely overrides the automatic process of natural selection as an agent of change.” (Evolution in action. Chatto & Windus, London, 1953,  p132.)
His commitment to an ethical vision and “humanism”–a term he virtually reinvented and modernized, yet pointing back to the classical and neo-classical usages,  led him to become involved with the founding of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (largely inspired by his work) and with John Dewey, Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann, to serve as a founding advisor to the First Humanist Society of New York.
Huxley however was, if not precisely in the American philosophical sense, a naturalist.  The two great philosophical traditions of Europe, the rationalist and the empirical, each had their own unresolved dualisms and overcame them in separate ways through linguistic and rational critique of the “supernatural.”  But Huxley was not eager to reduce religion to a commitment to supernatural entities and intrusions. He wrote, that the abandonment of the God-hypothesis did not entail the end of piety (in the strict, classical sense of the term) least of all ethics, but merely a recognition of our location of the history of our life on the planet:

“Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct something to take its place.”
The following essay is edited slightly from its 1964 version in Essays of a Humanist (1964: Chatto and Windus)

The Bishop of Woolwich’s courageous book, Honest to God, is impressive evidence not merely of what he calls our present theological ferment, but of the general ideological ferment and indeed of the revolution of thought through which we are struggling.
This is the inevitable outcome of the new vision of the world and man’s place and role in that world — in a word, of man’s destiny — which our new knowledge has revealed. This new vision is both comprehensive and unitary. It integrates the fantastic diversity of the world into a single framework, the pattern of all-embracing evolutionary process. In this unitary vision, all kinds of splits and dualisms are healed. The entire cosmos is made out of one and the same world-stuff, operated by the same energy as we ourselves. “Mind” and “matter” appears as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity.
This earth is one of the rare spots in the cosmos where mind has flowered. Man is a product of nearly three billion years of evolution, in whose person the evolutionary process has at last become conscious of itself and its possibilities. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for the whole further evolution of our planet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Robinson describes the current image of God as follows: “Somewhere beyond this universe is a Being, a centre of personal will and purpose, who created it and sustains it, who loves it and who ‘visited’ it in Jesus Christ. But I need not go on, for this is ‘our’ God. Theism means being convinced that this Being exists: atheism means denying that he does.” However he continues as follows: “But I suspect that we have reached a point where this mental image of God is also more of a hindrance than a help. … Any image can become an idol, and I believe that Christians must go through the agonizing process in this generation of detaching themselves from this idol.” He even writes that he heartily agrees with something I wrote many years ago in my Religion without revelation — “The sence of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a superhuman being is enormous.”
And yet he clings to the essential personal concept of God — “nothing,” he writes, “can separate us from the love of God”; and sums up his position in the following assertion, that “God is ultimate reality… and ultimate reality must exist”.
To the implications of these statements I shall return. Meanwhile let me state the position as I see it. Man emerged as the dominant type on earth about a million years ago, but has only been really effective as a psychosocial organism for under ten thousand years. In that mere second of cosmic time, he has produced astonishing achievements — but has also been guilty of unprecedented horrors and follies. And looked at in the long perspective of evolution he is singularly imperfect, still incapable of carrying out his planetary responsibilities in a satisfactory manner.
The radical evolutionary crisis through which man is now passing can only be surmounted by an equally radical reorganisation of his dominant system of thought and belief. During human history, there has been a succession of dominant systems of thought and belief, each accompanying a new organisation of social, political and economic activities — agriculture with its rituals of rebirth as against hunting with its magic; early civilization with its cities and sacred kings, its written records and its priesthoods; universal and monotheistic religion; later, the scientific, the industrial and the technological revolutions with their corresponding patterns of thought; and now the evolutionary and humanist revolution, whose ideological and social implications have still to be thought out.
What has all this to do with Dr Robinson’s views on God, or indeed with religion at all? The answer is, a great deal. In the first place, religion in some form is a universal function of man in society, the organ for dealing with the problems of destiny, the destiny of individual men and women, of societies and nations, and of the human species as a whole. Religions always have some intellectual or ideological framework, whether myth or theological doctrine; some morality or code of behaviour, whether barbaric or ethically rationalized; and some mode of ritualized or symbolic expression, in the form of ceremonial or celebration, collective devotion or thanksgiving, or religious art. But, as the history and comparative study of religions make clear, the codified morality and the ritualized expression of of a religion, and indeed in the long run its social and personal efficacy, derives from its “theological” framework. If the evolution of its ideological pattern does not keep pace with the growth of knowledge, with social change and the march of events, the religion will increasingly cease to satisfy the multitude seeking assurance about their destiny, and will become progressively less effective a a social organ.
Eventually the old ideas will no longer serve, the old ideological framework can no longer be tinkered up to bear the weight of the facts, and a radical reconstruction becomes necessary, leading eventually to the emergence of a quite new organisation of thought and belief, just as the emergence of new types of bodily organization was necessary to achieve biological advance.
Such major organizations of thought may be necessary in science as much as in religion. The classical example, of course, was the re-patterning of cosmological thought which demoted the earth from its central position and led to the replacement of the geocentric pattern of thought by a heliocentric one. I believe that an equally drastic reorganization of our pattern of religious thought is now becoming necessary, from a god-centered to an evolutionary-centered pattern. Simplified down to its bare essentials the stepwise reorganization of western religions thought seems to have proceeded as follows. In its early, paleolithic stage religion was magic-centred, based on the ideas of magic force inherent in nature, in personages such as “medicine men” and shamans, and in human incarnations, spells and other magic practices, including witchcraft. This type of belief developed gradually into animism and so to polydaimonism and polytheism; while with the coming of agriculture a new pattern was imposed, centering on the ideas of fertility and rebirth, and leading to the rise of priest-kings and eventually divinized monarchs. The next major revolution of religious thought came in the first millennium B.C with the independent rise of the monotheist and/or universalist religions, culminating in Christianity and later branching off into Islam. The last two thousand years have seen the development of elaborate monotheistic theologies; but in the process their single God has broken into many, or at least has assumed a number of distinct and indeed sometimes actively hostile forms; and their nominal universalism has degenerated into competition for the possession of absolute truth.
Of course a great deal of magic survived into the polytheist priest-king stage, and some persists in thinly disguised form in Christian and Mohammedan practices and ideas today. Similarly, elements of polydaemonism and polytheism persists in the nominally monotheist religion of Christianity, in the doctrine of the Trinity (with the virtual divinization of the Virgin in Catholicism), in the multiplication of its Saints and Angels, and in so doing has increased its flexibility.
But to come back to DR Robinson. He is surely right in concentrating on the problem of God, rather than on the resurrection or the after-life, for God is Christianity’s central hypothesis.
But he is surely wrong in making such statements as that “God is ultimate reality”. God is a hypothesis constructed by man to help him understand what existence is all about. The god hypothesis asserts the existence of some sort supernatural personal or superpersonal being, exerting some kind of purposeful power over the universe and its destiny. To say that God is ultimate reality is just semantic cheating, as well as being so vague as to become effectively meaningless (and when DR Robinson continues by saying “and ultimate reality must exist” he is surely running round a philosophically very vicious circle).
Dr Robinson, like Dr Tillich and many other modernist theologians, seems to me, and indeed to any humanist, to be trying to ride two horses at once, to keep his cake and eat it. He wants to be modern and meet the challenge of our new knowledge by stripping the image of God of virtually all its spatial, material, Freudian and anthropomorphic aspects. But he still persists in retaining the termGod, in spite of all its implifications of supernatural power and personality; and it is these implifications, not the modernists’ fine-spun arguments, which consciously and unconsciously affect the ordinary man and woman. Heads I win, tails you lose: humanists dislike this elaborate double-talk. The ambiguity involved can be simply illustrated by substituting some of the modernists’ definition of God for the plain word [I think it should read world, not word -- Fredrik's comment] itself. I am sure that many opponents of freer divorce use the phrace “whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder”. If they were to proclaim that “whom universal reality has joined together, let no man put asunder”, it would not carry the same weight.
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sence of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.
Though gods and God in any meaningful sence seem destined to disappear, the stuff of divinity out of which they have grown and developed remains. This religious raw material consists of those aspects of nature and those experiences which are usually described as divine. Let me remind my readers that the term divine did not originally imply the existence of gods: on the contrary, gods were constructed to interprete man’s experiences of this quality.
Some events and some phenomena of outer nature transcend ordinary explanation and ordinary experience. They inspire awe and seem mysterious, explicable only in terms of something beyond or above ordinary nature.
Such magical, mysterious, awe-inspiring, divinity-suggesting facts have included wholly outer phenomena like volcanic eruptions, thunder, and hurricanes; biological phenomena such as sex and birth, disease and death; and also inner, psychological phenomena such as intoxication, possession, speaking in tounges, inspiration, insanity, and mystic vision.
With the growth of knowledge most of these have ceased to be mysterious so far as rational or scientific explicability is concerned (though there remains the fundamental mystery of existence, notably the existence of mind). However, it is a fact that many phenomena are charged with some sort of magic or compulsive power, and do introduce us to a realm beyond our ordinary experience. Such events and such experience merit a special designation. For want of a better, I use the term divine, though this quality of divinity is not truely supernatural but transnatural — it grows out of ordinary nature, but transcends it. The divine is what man finds worthy of adoration, that which compels his awe.
Much of every religion is aimed at the discovery and safe-guarding of divinity in this sence, and seeks contact and communication with what is regarded as divine. A humanist evolution-centered religion too needs divinity, but divinity without God. It must strip the divine of the theistic qualities which man has antropomorphically projected into it, search for its habitations in every aspect of existence, elicit it, and establish fruitful contact with its manifestations. Divinity is the chief raw material out of which gods have been fashioned. Today we must melt down the gods and refashion the material into new and effective organs of religion, enabling man to exist freely and fully on the spiritual level as well as on the material.
What precise form these new agencies of religious thought will take it is impossible to say in this period of violent transition. But one can make some general prophesies. The central religious hypothesis will certainly be evolution, which by now has been checked against objective fact and has become firmly established as a principle. Evolution is a process, of which we are products, and in which we are active agents. There is no finality about the process, and no automatic or unified progress; but much improvement has occured in the past, and there could be much further improvement in the future (though there is also the possibility of future failure and regression).
Thus the central long-term concern of religion must be to promote further evolutionary improvement and to realise new possibilities; and this means greater fulfilment by more human individuals and fuller achievement by more human societies
Human potentialities constitute the world’s greatest resource, but at the moment only a tiny fraction of them is being realized. The possibility of tapping and directing these vast resources of human possibility provide the religion of the future with a powerful long-term motive. An equally powerful short-term motive is to ensure the fullest possible development and flowering of individual personalities. In developing a full, deep and rich personality the individual ceases to be a mere cog or cipher, and makes his own particular contribution to evolutionary fulfilment.
In a way most important of all, an evolution-centered religion can no longer be divided off from secular affairs in a separate supernatural compartment, but will interlock with them at every point. The only distinction is that it is concerned with less immediate, less superficial, and therefore more enduring and deeper aspects of existence.
Meanwhile, religious rituals and moral codes will have to be readapted or remodelled. Besides what Nietzsche called the transvaluation of values, we shall need a transfiguration of thought, a new religious terminology and a reformulation of religious ideas and concepts in a new idiom. A humanist religion will have to work out its own rituals and its own basic symbolism.
In place of eternity we shall have to think in terms of enduring process; in place of salvation in terms of attaining the satisfying states of inner being which combine energy and peace. There will be no room for petitionary prayer, but much value in prayer involving aspiration and self-exploration. A religion of fulfilment must provide bustling secular man with contacts with all that is permanent and enduring, with the deeper and higher aspects of existence; indeed, with every possible opportunity of transcending the limitations not only of his day-by-day existence in the equivalents of shared worship, but of his little secular self in acts of meditation and self-examination and in retreats from the secular world of affairs. It will of course continue to celebrate the outstanding events of personal and national existence (already in some countries there are humanist wedding and funeral ceremonies). Furthermore, it will enlist the aid of psychologists and psychiatrists in helping men and women to explore the depths and heights of their own inner selves instead of restlessly pursuing external noveltry, to realize more of their mental and spiritual possibilities, to utilize even their repressed and guilty urges, and to transcendent the limitations and the internal conflicts of the unregenerate self in a constructive wholeness and a sense of achieving contact or union with a fuller reality.
Christianity is a universalist and monotheist religion of salvation. Its long consolidation and explosive spread, achieved through a long period of discussion and zealous ferment, released vast human forces which have largely shaped the western world as we know it. An evolutionary and humanist religion of fulfilment could be more truly universal and could release even vaster human forces, which could in large measure shape the development of the entire world. But its consolidation and spread will need a period of discussion and ferment, though with modern communications this is likely to be much shorter than for Christianity.
The evolutionary vision of man’s place and role in the universe which science and scholarship have given us, could be the revelation of the new dispensation. Dr Robinson’s article is evidence of its effectiveness in changing ideas. What we now need is a multitude of participants to take part in the great discussion and to join in the search for the larger truth and the more fruitful patterns of belief which we confidently believe is waiting to be elicited.
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Published: April 6, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: agnosticism : Darwin : evolution : Honest to God : humanism : Institute for Science and Human Values : JAT Robinson : Julian Huxley ..
46 Responses to “Julian Huxley: Why Liberal Theology is Not Enough”

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 churchmouse 
 April 6, 2011 at 7:00 pm
But, what do you make of Jesus Christ — true God and true man?
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 6, 2011 at 7:14 pm
@churchmouse: Interesting idiom; invented in 325, amended in 481.
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 maryhelena 
 April 7, 2011 at 2:25 am
churchmouse: But, what do you make of Jesus Christ — true God and true man?
Or delusion?
Step one for the atheist – ditch theism – the great ‘god delusion’
Step two for the atheist – ditch JC – the great ‘historical delusion’
OK – I’ll run now before Joseph brings down the curtain…..
Seriously, though, there cannot be any forward movement towards humanism while that figure on the cross is believed to be the very epitome of what it means to be human – the seat and the wellspring of Christian morality. This final roadblock to a humanist world needs to be bulldozed to the only place where it can have any rational expression – as a symbol of intellectual evolution. Mind and Matter – the two elements of our humanity – function according to two very different codes – one moral and the other amoral.
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 steph 
 April 7, 2011 at 9:11 am
I’m not sure about churchmouse’s personal faith, but I don’t think all Christians think that the Jesus of history is quite the same as the Christ of faith. For many Christians, ‘Christian morality’ lies more in the teachings attributed to him. The Christianity you seem to be representing is fundamentalist which is contrary to the beliefs of masses of theists who do not believe in a God who subjected ‘his son’ to the most appalling and agonising death in order to achieve salvation. Theistic perceptions of God are very broad and complex and sometimes seemingly vague. Therefore I don’t think Christians have to have their theistic beliefs ‘bulldozed’ in order to be humanists. Over time in a truly humanist society beliefs will probably dissolve. A truly humanist society can encourage people to adopt reason and find spiritual, or life fulfillment in things like nature, the arts, and human relationships. When religion is personal, humanism can make progress inclusively. We all share common values anyway.

 
 maryhelena 
 April 7, 2011 at 11:30 am
Oh my, steph – your not surely suggesting a Christianity without ‘salvation’ – a Christianity without it’s reason raison d’être….? Christianity minus theism is one thing (as proposed by Lloyd Geering) but Christianity without it’s ‘christ of faith’, the dying and rising figure on the cross – no way, that is neither Christian theology nor is it Christian anything.
Christian morality is the cross – the very cross that millions of Christians see as the symbol of their faith – and keep it nice and close by hanging it around their necks. How on earth can you have anything remotely Christian without giving homage to the figure on the cross?
Sure, a humanist society can function without the figure on the cross – but if we want to include as many of our fellow humans as we possibly can – then we have to make some attempt to understand the figure on the cross in other than a moral context. Side-stepping this issue is bizarre. Christianity has built it’s salvation theology upon the belief that a historical JC was crucified – albeit a miscarriage of justice. However, building a salvation theology upon a miscarriage of justice is a monstrous idea. Consequently, we do those early Christian writers a serious injustice were we to maintain that that is what they did do. I have more faith in their rationality than that…..
“…beliefs will probably dissolve.” Wishful thinking I’m afraid. Ideas, especially ideas that have been around for a long time, don’t go to their neither-land without a struggle. The glory days of their youth have not prepared them for the inevitable – it’s a case of ‘rage, rage, against the dying of the light’….
The “Jesus of history’ – steph, go back to school and get out a history book – start there and then come back to me….

 
 steph 
 April 7, 2011 at 12:24 pm
This is your view Maryhelena. It is a very narrow perspective of what many Christians believe. I’m glad you’ve read Professor Lloyd Geering. He was one of my undergraduate teachers. I later assisted Dr Jim Veitch in research for a post doctoral thesis on Lloyd’s ‘heresy’ trial.
You don’t seem aware of scholarship on the Jesus of history, especially that of non believers such as Michael Grant and more recently Maurice Casey and James Crossley.
I’m surprised by your rude comments insulting my education and intelligence. It’s generally only a habit of aggressive atheists who despise religion. We clearly have quite different world experiences.

 
 steph 
 April 7, 2011 at 3:12 pm
This reminds me of that fable about the sun and the wind and a man wearing an unbuttoned coat. The wind challenged the sun to make the man take his coat off, and said he could do it more quickly than the sun. So the wind blew but the man buttoned and tightened his coat and wouldn’t take it off…. when the sun tried, she glowed warmly down and it wasn’t long before the man undid and peeled off his coat.
It is unrealistic to expect ‘bulldozing’, ridicule and abuse to convince believers to let go their faiths. The billboards and blog rhetoric for example, have only achieved antagonism from fundamentalists (while more accommodating believers couldn’t care less), entertainment for the campaign creators and supporters, and whether it’s increased or relieved their anger with religion, it’s hard to tell. Fundamentalist believers will often react by putting up more defensives, uniting and becoming stronger.
You have to create something attractive in religion’s place and that is what Huxley suggests: “religious rituals and moral codes will have to be readapted or remodelled”. He wasn’t talking about throwing everything out. I think only by constructing a secular (humanistic) education in the sciences and logic as well as the arts including histories of atheism, humanism and religious beliefs can encourage people to let go their faith. The structure of society, and politics must be freed of religion. That has to happen before we can hope to get rid of fundamentalist belief.
Religion is more diluted where democratic government and education are free of religion and belief is personal. There is no overnight remedy for places like America where government, education and society is saturated with religion, particularly in the south. There needs to be a cooperative effort to adapt, remould and build a better structure and then progress can be made.

 
 maryhelena 
 April 8, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Steph: “I’m surprised by your rude comments insulting my education and intelligence. It’s generally only a habit of aggressive atheists who despise religion. We clearly have quite different world experiences.”
No rude comments at all. I responded to your post in which you made an unfounded assertion – and I called you on it. Your words: “Jesus of history’: I suggested that you find yourself a history book and get back to me – that suggestion still stands. Quoting other names as though these names have any relevance to my suggestion to you, that you consider a history book before you make such unfounded statements, are irrelevant.
Steph, don’t throw scholarship at me – I’ve been an ahistoricist/mythicist for well over 25 years – so don’t try telling me to read books by scholars trying to prove the impossible – it can’t be done. I’m not here to debate the ahistoricist/mythicist position on JC – been there, done that and moved on and now have no interest in such elementary discussions. It’s the world beyond the assumped historical JC that interests me. And don’t try comparing me with either Doherty or Wells – or whoever, for that matter. I blow my own horn – just so you know…
And Steph, cut the talk about “aggressive atheists who despise religion” – if I was such a one as you seem to want to suggest – let me tell you something – I would not be posting here.
Hopefully the above has now cleared the air…

 
 maryhelena 
 April 8, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Steph: “It is unrealistic to expect ‘bulldozing’, ridicule and abuse to convince believers to let go their faiths. The billboards and blog rhetoric for example, have only achieved antagonism from fundamentalists”.
For heavens sake Steph, go back and read the paragraph from which you have taken the bulldozed expression. I was talking metaphorical not literally. Adding the words “ridicule and abuse” as you have done, to my metaphorical use of bulldozed is not only bizarre it is unworthy of rational communication. The context is ideas – the context is not people.
Trying to convince “believer to let go their faiths” – that’s not my game plan at all. People change when they feel the need to do so. My plan is to push the boundaries of NT interpretation – and for that I need to be able to disregard popular or consensus positions and get the bulldozer out…
Yes, ideas that stay beyond their sell by date need to be ‘bulldozed’ out of the way. They need to be exposed for their irrationality, they need to be stripped bare, hung, if you like, on that Calvary cross, exposed to the elements. That’s intellectual life – and has nothing at all to with communication between individuals. Context, Steph, context – Mind and Matter…

 
 steph 
 April 9, 2011 at 12:13 am
I made no unfounded assertions. The “Jesus of history” is someone I will never be absolutely certain about. The point I was making was about what some Christians believe and the way they pick out the human bits in the tradition, like a human being teaching, and leave the supernatural bits to myth, ie the so called Christ of Faith, the dying, rising martyr and miracle worker. The scholarship is not ‘proving’ anything, it is demonstrating theory. And of course I know ‘bulldozing’ is metaphorical. I can’t understand how you could possibly think otherwise. But ‘bulldozing’ implies aggression, and sits alongside things like abuse and sarcasm. The latter at least is bossily littered through your replies. That’s OK, you’re entitled to your opinions.

 
 steph 
 April 9, 2011 at 10:51 am
I should add that I appreciate your contribution and even your tone, Maryhelena. I like to keep in touch with continuing debate in scholarship and in the public sphere. I therefore thought the scholarship I identified might be of interest to you, including those authors promoting very ‘radical’ non theistic Christianity. I like to keep up with the most recent scholarship from different perspectives in order to keep critical and never be dogmatic, and be flexible enough to change my views. My views continually evolve and have slid backwards and forwards as I continue to do research.

 
 
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 April 7, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Note to Christians: Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, but go directly to the gospel of Matthew and verse 6:13. Then take a pair of scissors and cut out all the verses from 6:13 and following through to 7:29. You will then have what’s called “The Sermon on the Mount,” which is the Christian moral philosophy. And that’s all you really need to be a good Christian. Now, you can throw away the rest of the bible. It’s really just confusing and is superfluous anyway; it’ll be like a smaller version of the Jefferson Bible.
Now, read those verses every day – or more often if you need to (and many Christians do) – and pledge that you will follow those teachings every minute of every day and apply them to all of the activities in your daily life — from family to work to play to politics. Just think of how much better the world would be if Christians, all 2.1 billion of them, did this.
We now return you to the regularly scheduled program.
Reply

 steph 
 April 8, 2011 at 12:18 pm
That’s beautiful Herb. It’s pretty much what some millions of Christians do. Without the scissors maybe. They just read the ‘good’ bits – the sermon is about it – and ignore the rest or just see it as story. Sometimes it might seem as if the Jesus Seminar does a bit of that. I imagine them selecting all the appealing bits, painting them red, and brushing out the rest with black and grey. Jesus the cynic philosopher, a witty and gentle man. He’d be welcome in our twenty first century homes. What good company too – he LOVES his wine!
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 maryhelena 
 April 9, 2011 at 5:39 am
Oh, my…..responding to the admonition of Herb that ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ would, if implemented by all, make the world a better place…” Steph says:
“Jesus the cynic philosopher, a witty and gentle man. He’d be welcome in our twenty first century homes. What good company too – he LOVES his wine!”
Great imagination there Steph….For myself, I’d say that any man, or woman, who takes up the sermon on the mount as a philosophy or moral code for living a rational life within a social context – is neither a philosopher, witty or gentle – and I’d not give him the time of day, let alone sit down with such a man for a glass of wine – but maybe that’s just it – too much wine and his head is just so full of bull……
OK, lets start with Matthew 6:14: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” – and so on – and if you don’t forgive others then the heavenly Father will not forgive you.
Apart from the fact that any rational atheist should have their crap detector on high alert when admonition such as this is coming from high above in outer space – the admonition itself needs to be subject to the reality of living a real life in the here and now.
Forgiveness – well, I’ll lay my cards on the table – for me, it’s a case of it being rather like a red flag to a bull….
My own crap detector went on red alter just over 10 years ago. I was sitting comfortably in front of the TV – and on comes Oprah and Dr Phil. The young woman as their guest had a problem – some years previously her father had been murdered – and the man responsible was still in jail. Her problem – she could not bring herself to forgive him. So, Dr Phil to the rescue. Up comes the murdered man’s picture on the big screen – and Dr Phil does his pop psychology bit – and then the young woman stands in front of the picture of the man who murdered her father – and with tears running down her face – forgave him…
Rather than throw a shoe at the TV – I sent off emails to both Oprah and Dr Phil – no reply. Bottom line here, of course, is that theology has infiltrated psychology. However, there are concerned people out there:
Before Forgiving: Cautionary Views of Forgiveness In Psychotherapy.
 (edited by Sharon Lamb and Jeffrie G. Murphy).
Getting Even: Forgiveness And Its Limits
 (Jeffrie G Murphy)
Forgiveness And The Healing Process: A Central Therapeutic Concern.
 (edited by Cynthia Ransley and Terri Spy).
Murphy and Lamb are based in the US. Murphy is a philosopher and Lamb a psychologist.
Ransley and Spy are based in the UK – both are psychologists. (one a Christian, the other an agnostic).
The Christians do have an escape hatch for their literal, social contract, reading of forgiveness – sinning against the Holy Ghost merits a pass on forgiving….
So, Steph, if wise men, and women, today, in this 21th century, are advocating caution re the whole forgiveness idea as a psychological necessity for human wellbeing – then, lets not go ascribing such a questionable teaching to any lst century wise man……Come on now – the historical context from within which the NT springs – a historical conflict between Jewish nationalism and Roman imperialism – forgiveness would be tantamount to treason. So – it’s not a moral code that is being advocated in the sermon on the mount – it’s an intellectual, amoral code, where ‘forgiveness’ of old ideas is a rational action in order to move on to the next idea….”Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. When you know better you do better – the old ideas had their rightful place but eventually they become tired and lack the necessary energy to move forward – so you ‘forgive’ them for their mistakes, their inadequacies, and embrace the new….(which of course, as with all ideas, are always indebted to the old…..)
Fay Weldon: Female Friends.
“Understand and forgive, my mother said, and the effort has quite exhausted me. I could do with some anger to energize me, and bring me back to life again. But where can I find that anger? Who is to help me? My friends? I have been understanding and forgiving my friends, my female friends, for as long as I can remember……Understand and forgive……Understand husbands, wives, fathers, mothers…….Grit your teeth, endure. Understand, forgive, accept, in the light of your own death, your own inevitable corruption.”
“Oh mother, what have you taught me? And what a miserable, crawling, snivelling way to go, the worn-out slippers placed neatly beneath the bed, careful not to give offense.”

 
 
 churchmouse 
 April 8, 2011 at 8:20 pm
Herb
Thanks for the suggestion. True Christians read and study the entire Bible, particularly the New Testament. (Christ freed us from the 613 tenets of Mosaic Law but not from the Ten Commandments.) Yes, it would be nice if we could cut and paste the verses we’d like to keep, but that would be a superficial and carnal desire. So, we need to study all of it (God’s preparation of His Chosen through to the Messiah’s birth, Crucifixion and Resurrection). We also need to obey Jesus’s harsher teachings about sin and redemption.
Love thy neighbour and love God above all? That can prove difficult in everyday life.
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 steph 
 April 8, 2011 at 9:43 am
Christian morality is the cross – for millions. You’re absolutely right. I love simplicity, frugality, occam’s razor and clarity. Formula’s however, while simple, concise and nice, compromise complexity and ultimately clarity. For other millions, who are also ‘Christians’, Christian morality lies in Jesus’ teachings and even common human values. Furthermore, there is no biblical theism. Millions of Christians who identify as Christians have faith positions which are more agnostic and skeptical and even atheist on non theist. Liberal Christianity in New Zealand for example, is personal, non intrusive, a bit wishy washy and seemingly vague. Liberal Christians advocate a secular society and social justice. ‘Christians’ like Lloyd Geering are popular with Christians, so is Jim Veitch, Bishop Spong, Bishop Robinson, Bob Funk, Dom Crossan and there are loads more. I love school. We all continue learning, evolving, changing our minds, hopefully, until we die.
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 steph 
 April 8, 2011 at 9:52 am
Dammit I’m late for my grammar class. Damned apostrophe OUT OUT OUT of formulas.
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 scott 
 April 8, 2011 at 10:04 am
MaryHelena,
Please see “Il Imitatio di Christi” and other humanistic examples of christ and then come back to us.
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 steph 
 April 10, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Just a brief comment on the post: I love Julian Huxley, the work of his I’ve read and things I’ve been told about him. My friend Maurice attended his lectures in Durham and says they were very impressive. He was a clear and compelling lecturer and he is remembered distinctly. I love Huxley’s truly humanist ideas, retaining a sense of divinity without the ‘Almighty’. In a sense he seeks to preserve the humanist aspects of religions, the sense of wonder and awe, the beauty of ceremony. These are the things that humanly spiritual passions led humans to create religions in the first place. These aren’t compromised when the unnecessary ‘other’ is left out. The gods were created to take away responsibility for genuine human enquiry. Yet there is every reason to continue loving learning and enquiry within a truly humanist society, with a passion for life and making it fulfilling.
8X8
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 maryhelena 
 April 10, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Steph: “I made no unfounded assertions. The “Jesus of history” is someone I will never be absolutely certain about.”
Glad to hear that….
Perhaps so as not to cause confusion – when referencing the gospel JC figure – it’s best to correctly identify what one is in fact referencing…- the gospel JC figure. That way people can read into the reference what they, themselves, understand that figure to be. Once one goes with the ‘history’ reference – then it’s a whole different ball game. People can believe that JC was a real figure, a figure of flesh and blood – that’s possible but, to mind, highly improbable. What they can’t do, and no amount of scholarly theory should be appearing to be doing, is to use a sleight of hand procedure — substituting theory and interpretation for historical reality. So, best to keep away from any use of ‘history’ as an identifier re the gospel JC…
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 maryhelena 
 April 10, 2011 at 2:52 pm
Steph – I’m quite ready to read any new research – if someone can point me in that direction. I’m not interested in reading old news – scholars repeating themselves with the same tired arguments in support of a historical JC. I believe Bart Ehrman is supposed to be writing an ebook against the mythicists – so lets see – methinks he might just be about to shoot himself in the foot…
Actually, I’ve not read books by either Doherty or Wells, for that matter. Just a bit on Doherty’s webpage and the same for Wells on internet infidels. I came across a reference to Wells and wrote to him over 20 years ago – he did send me a photo-copy of an article – which I seem to have lost. The book that got me going was The Myth of God Incarnate, edited by John Hick. Up until then I had been reading theological stuff – Hans Kung and a few others. But after the Myth book – theology was sidelined.
So, yes, I’m open to new ideas – bring them on – but please not any scholars rehashing yesterdays news…
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 steph 
 April 10, 2011 at 3:53 pm
“Jesus the cynic philosopher who loves his wine” is not a product of my imagination. It is a product of the Jesus seminar as you will realise from reading much of their published work. Personally I think it’s completely anachronistic and the theory is fundamentally flawed. I assure you there are million of Christians who read selectively what they believe feels comfortable and humanistic from teachings attributed to Jesus without taking the biblical theism on board. As to your own learning, I think there is no point for any further suggestions or discussion as your opinions are dogmatic and your mind firmly set. I hope you continue to enjoy reading only what you agree with and dismissing the rest. For myself, I prefer not to criticise new scholarship until I have read it for myself. As always it’s been fascinating reading your strongly opinionated comments.
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 steph 
 April 10, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Maryhelena: I have always been deeply suspicious of most things and have never believed in any supernatural faiths. I appreciate growing up in an environment where I had the freedom to choose my own way. I was surrounded my many various flavours of several different religions and probably more non belief and variations of agnosticism. I am also deeply suspicious of some of the arguments of scholars whose work I respect most. I wonder what your background is. I am very interested in your opinion of the work related to humanism by Julian Huxley, and in particular the essay printed in this post. Maybe we might share a common appreciation of his values.
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 maryhelena 
 April 11, 2011 at 12:29 am
Steph: My growing up environment was Irish Catholic. So, rather a constricted view of things…I married a non-Catholic but with ideas of talking him around to the RC way – which never happened. He remained a believer in God until the end – while I eventually became an atheist. On her deathbed my mother told me that the worst thing a daughter could do to her mother was to leave the Church she had been brought up in….(the morning after travelling from SA to the UK – she apologized the next day….)
Re the blog post on Julian Huxley: Overall his position is to be recommended. My main nitpick would be that his view of religion is perhaps rather narrow:
“But, as the history and comparative study of religions make clear, the codified morality and the ritualized expression of of a religion, and indeed in the long run its social and personal efficacy, derives from its “theological” framework.”
Scott Atran has a deeper perspective:
“The cognitive perspective I have chosen for this book is a biological and scientific perspective that focuses on the casual role of the mind/brain in generating behaviour. From this vantage, religion is not doctrine, or institutions, or even faith. Religion ensues from the ordinary workings of the human mind as it deals with emotionally compelling problems of human existence, such as birth, aging, death, unforeseen calamities, and love. In religion, these ‘facts of life’ are always inherent problems of society, caused by the very same intentional agents that are thought to constitute society. For religion, there is always an intentional, socially relevant reason for this particular person to have been born a man rather than a woman, for a wave to have knocked over and drowned a person at a specific place and time”. (page viii). ‘In God’s We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion’.
“..not doctrine, or institutions, or even faith….” now that’s a great insight on religion….. . Religion is a far more involved phenomenon than can be equated with xyz theological ideas.
(the quote is available on the Amazon book view – I’ve now received the book and it’s waiting to be read….Oh, Amazon book view is also available for some books of Wells – so I have read a bit of his books that way….)
I liked Huxley’s, “Mind” and “matter” appears as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies.
Also: “Meanwhile, religious rituals and moral codes will have to be readapted or remodelled. Besides what Nietzsche called the transvaluation of values, we shall need a transfiguration of thought, a new religious terminology and a reformulation of religious ideas and concepts in a new idiom. A humanist religion will have to work out its own rituals and its own basic symbolism.”
“…a reformulation of religious ideas and concepts in a new idiom.” And that is generally what I try and do. I’m not throwing out the NT – I’m endeavouring to re-interpret it to our modern understanding of who and what we are as human beings. Sure, trying to understand Paul and his theological/philosophical musings, according to whatever we might think was the current state of 1st century thinking, might be of interest – but it could also be useless for our day. Words are often inadequate to express what we really mean – and limited by the science of the 1st century, NT writers did what they did with what they had….
So, like I did with that forgiveness idea – perhaps it’s necessary to turn things upside down – the whole Mind and Matter context. Ideas that we once thought belonged to Matter should instead be assigned to Mind. Or in more simple terms – what we need is a New Heaven before we can think about that New Earth..
Huxley: “Eventually the old ideas will no longer serve, the old ideological framework can no longer be tinkered up to bear the weight of the facts, and a radical reconstruction becomes necessary, leading eventually to the emergence of a quite new organisation of thought and belief, just as the emergence of new types of bodily organization was necessary to achieve biological advance.”
(I do have two books by John Robinson, ‘Honest to God’ and ‘Exploration Into God’ – but years since I opened them….)
Reply
 
 maryhelena 
 April 11, 2011 at 2:04 am
Oh, come off it steph – are you really going to be telling me that you find some benefit in reading books by creationists….This is a ridiculous argument. If a historical gospel JC floats ones boat – then read everything any scholars wants to put out there. I personally find such an idea useless. The idea is stagnant – stagnant as far as any investigation into early history goes – and that is surely what is of interest. One does not progress in understanding by keeping a million and one ideas floating around in ones mind. One has to learn not only to let go but also to use some ideas as a basis upon which to build. And that is not being dogmatic – it’s simply a realization that one has to have some foundation upon which to build. Sure, one’s foundation can have cracks and might need to be re-built – but one will get nowhere without using some foundation stones…The only thing my mind is set upon is the ahistorical position re JC – and after 25 years of using this foundation stone – things are looking pretty good…. while the opposite idea is continuing to go around in circles…
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 11, 2011 at 8:37 am
I was interested that you come from an Irish Catholic background. Thank you for sharing that. I guess it must have been difficult to free yourself from such a dogmatic faith. I thought it must have been something dire. It’s good you have some sympathy for so much of the work of Julian Huxley. I have not however seen Scott Atran’s book, which sounds interesting.
I did read books by creationists when I was an undergraduate, but do not do so at present because it does not fit in with my current research. I have recently read and critiqued quite a lot by Christian apologists, including Ben Witherington, Scott McKnight, William Lane Craig and the Pope. I also read and critique alot of scholarship which is affected by Christian bias, eg. John P Meier, Fitzmyer, Dale Allison, NT Wright etc. If they are the only sort of people you come across on the historical Jesus, it’s no wonder you have your prejudices confirmed and imagine scholarship on this subject is all going round in circles. Then of course there is the secular scholarship which is also flawed mainly a consequence of ex Christian fundamentalist background eg Bart Ehrmann and Robert Price. Michael Goulder was an exception – his expertise and honesty is transparent. I drew your attention to recent scholarship not going around in circles which I recommend you read first hand for yourself. I am also involved with much new independent academic research with new methodologies in progress in various parts of the world. Thank you for your thoughts.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 11, 2011 at 11:09 am
Thank you for sharing that. I did read books by creationists when I was an undergraduate, but haven’t recently because they don’t appear in my current research area. I have recently read and critiqued quite a lot by Christian apologists, including Ben Witherington, Scott McKnight, William Lane Craig and the Pope. I also read and critique alot of scholarship which is affected by Christian bias, eg. John P Meier, Fitzmyer, Dale Allison, NT Wright etc. Then of course there is the secular scholarship eg Bart Ehrmann and Robert Price. Michael Goulder was an exception as an ex Christian and atheist – his expertise and honesty is transparent. I drew your attention to recent scholarship which I thought you might like to read first hand. I am also involved with new independent research with new methodologies in progress in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 11, 2011 at 1:43 pm
I should add that my current objective in research is not to prove or disprove the existence of any person in Christian literature. My objective is merely to demonstrate that a single written Greek document hypothesis is totally implausible. This is the conclusion I have reached after far too long studying the so called ‘synoptic problem’. Also the creationist theories I have read were generally written by scholars with degrees in the sciences(!!!), not by biblical scholars. Plenty of Christian apologists I have read recently have been accused of being creationists but I can’t prove whether they are or are not.
Reply
 
 maryhelena 
 April 12, 2011 at 1:33 am
My “prejudices confirmed” on the assumed historical JC because of certain apologists that you name? And as for “prejudices” re the whole JC argument – what on earth has ‘prejudice’ got to do with it? I have come to a conclusion – no historical gospel JC – and that conclusion is, seemingly, by your thinking, supposed to make me prejudiced against the work of scholars who write about this topic. Steph, I really don’t know where you are coming from here…I’m not prejudiced against the historical JC idea – I have looked into this idea and found it to be wanting….Aiming ‘prejudice’ at me re the JC idea is nonsensical….
prejudice
“An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.”
OK, so I’ve not read the latest offerings by scholars, either apologists or agnostics. You know what – if anyone of them is able to produce something new – and glory be – actually provides some historical evidence for what they claim re the gospel JC figure – then don’t you think that great news would be on every news channel 24 hours a day. And the lucky man, or woman, would be in line for next years Templeton million pounds – and even a Nobel might be waiting…So, as of now, looks to be I’m not missing anything…
Michael Goulder: I wrote to him in 1983 (28 years ago) after reading the Myth book. (a short while before I became an ahistoricts re JC).
“You have certainly done some thinking, away on your own: and what you need, in order to make progress, is a university course in Theology. It is sad, but the whole area is such a minefield that someone on their own needs constant supervision so as to avoid the upsets of the last 200 years”.
Well, I decided to avoid that minefield….
I did read, or rather wade through, Edward Schillebeeckx’s two books: Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World.
When the proverbial penny dropped that there was no historical gospel JC – I reached for a history book. (Israelite and Judean History, Hayes and Miller).
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 12, 2011 at 10:46 am
As you suggest Michael did made those remarks in 1983. The Michael I knew later, was a great advocate of new scholarship. I only gave you a few examples of the sort of scholarship you might have read, not an exhaustive list (and I’m very under impressed by the work of Dunn including his most recent work – I’d include him in the circle I suggested). You also suggested you had not read any recent work and I gave you a couple of examples which are not going round in circles. There is much recent independent work, particularly by secular scholars, with new methodologies and new approaches to enquiry. I am involved with such scholars in New Zealand, Australia nad the UK. However I did not wish to engage in debate over historicity of ancient figures in Christian literature and if you have made up your mind, it really doesn’t matter. I’m more concerned that new generations should be encouraged to learn and enquire. My initial point was that there is a much greater diversity amongst the beliefs of self identifying Christians, than you concede. You may be surrounded by conservative literalists, but there are many more Christians of varying degrees of dilution in what they believe. And even if they believe Jesus existed, a belief which is not disproved, and some of the basic teachings attributed are part of their moral structure, there is nothing harmful. Christian liberals are advocates for social justice, gay rights and they are opposed to war. They are also opposed to fundamentalism. I see nothing to ridicule or ‘bulldoze’ and if you disagree, we’ll have to agree to differ.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 12, 2011 at 12:36 pm
You say Michael suggested theology and then despaired at the state of theology. That would have been true then but now there are more innovative studies in theology around, some of which is written by people who greatly appreciated his work and much of which is secular. I never studied it formally. I’ve read myself into it. I’m interested in the history of theology rather than ‘the knowledge of nothing’ itself as I’ve never believed there was any God to know. However I believe the debates about God should be continued for the benefit of those who still believe in a God and I am interested in them but do not wish to engage in them myself. My training has been in world religions and then biblical studies. I’m interested in the history of spirituality and creation of religions. I suggest the study and understanding of history is important in order to understand the present and make progress, instead of repeating historical mistakes.
Reply
 
 maryhelena 
 April 12, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Steph, why is it that I get the impression from your reply to my posts that you seem to want to undermine my position – that my lack of interest in modern scholarship is somehow suspect, that it betrays some inadequacy on my part, that my use of the ‘bulldoze’ expression means that I want to “ridicule” modern scholarship. That I don’t see any value, for me, in spending time reading about modern scholarship regarding the assumed historical JC – does not mean that I am endeavouring to ‘ridicule’ the work such scholars do. Working from the assumption of a historical JC they will only produce arguments related to that assumption. I find it very strange indeed that anyone could suggest that once one has rejected an argument that one must continue to be engaged in any new twists and turns that advocates of the argument can conjure up…..beats me, I’m afraid….
So, I’ll leave Huxley the final word on this one…
Huxley: “Eventually the old ideas will no longer serve, the old ideological framework can no longer be tinkered up to bear the weight of the facts, and a radical reconstruction becomes necessary, leading eventually to the emergence of a quite new organisation of thought and belief, just as the emergence of new types of bodily organization was necessary to achieve biological advance.”
That, steph, is where NT research is at – or where it should be….-…. tinkering just won’t do any more…
Reply

 steph 
 April 12, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Is that a question? I don’t know why you get that feeling. I never said any of that, and I only repeated your use of ‘bulldoze’ in the context of religious belief. You said scholarship goes round in circles and you haven’t read any recent scholarship, so I gave you a couple of examples of recent scholarship that doesn’t go round in circles… It is of no importance to me whether you choose to read them or not. And innovative, new independent scholarship is in agreement with Huxley. We learn from history and learn not to repeat those ‘old ideas’ and flawed methodologies. But not having read recent scholarship, I don’t really think you’re in a position to say where it is ‘at’. On the other hand, you’re free to express your opinion and as I have already suggested, I am only concerned here, with defending the many varieties of belief among Christians today.
Reply
 
 
 maryhelena 
 April 12, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Steph: “…..there are many more Christians of varying degrees of dilution in what they believe. And even if they believe Jesus existed, a belief which is not disproved, and some of the basic teachings attributed are part of their moral structure, there is nothing harmful. Christian liberals are advocates for social justice, gay rights and they are opposed to war. They are also opposed to fundamentalism. I see nothing to ridicule or ‘bulldoze’ and if you disagree, we’ll have to agree to differ.”
Steph, oh steph – it’s not a question of some Christians not being ‘harmful’ – so leave them alone in their diluted versions of Christian theology or morality. Intellectual evolution is no respecter of people’s comfort zones – it marches on to it’s own drumbeat….Don’t get waylaid by those New Atheists who want to kick religion to the gutter and use ridicule, mockery and distain as their weapons. Don’t imagine that if their rhetoric could somehow be cooled down that the ‘assault’ upon Christian beliefs would simultaneously cease. That’s not going to happen. It’s not a case of hating religion or hating Christianity – it’s a case of moving things along…..
While one can perhaps think that Robert Funk’s twenty-one Theses on The Coming Radical Reformation did not go far enough – at least he appreciated the degree of change that is necessary – radical. Yes, I have empathy for those Christians who are doing the best with what they know – but change is a wild and unpredictable animal and nobody can soften it’s impact. The Jews survived the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 c.e. – they picked up the pieces and moved forward – should we think less of Christians if their spiritual temple falls? And should we think that Christianity is somehow immune to such a possibility?
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 12, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Maryhelena oh Maryhelena, despite your lengthy and fascinating comments, I don’t really see your plan. I’m interested in a plan which involves education. Perhaps we have different priorities. Whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 13, 2011 at 10:55 am
I never said “so leave them alone”. I have suggested education, and the implication is radical reformation of education to include things essential to humanism (and eliminate creationism!!). I do not think ‘bulldoze’ is an appropriate metaphor and you haven’t offered any alternative useful plan to “move things along”. The analogy of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple does not quite fit the contemporary situation. You can’t feasibly rip away belief without educating believers into rational thinking instead. You can rip away physical structures but you can’t rip away emotional dependencies of the mind. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple encouraged Jews to unite, establish their faith more strongly and become less variegated.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 13, 2011 at 11:24 am
Ps. Bob Funk’s 21 theses represent the contemporary liberal Christian faith I’ve been discussing above and also the Christianity of the self identifying Christian fellows within the Jesus Seminar at the time. He defines it accurately.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 13, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Maryhelena: Robert Frost was one of mum’s poets. I like him too but I have always loved this poem, for obvious reasons. You might know it… “The Peaceful Shepherd”.
If heaven were to do again,
 And on the pasture bars,
 I leaned to line the figures in
 Between the dotted starts,
I should be tempted to forget,
 I fear, the Crown of Rule,
 The Scales of Trade, the Cross of Faith,
 As hardly worth renewal.
For these have governed in our lives,
 And see how men have warred.
 The Cross, the Crown, the Scales may all
 As well have been the Sword
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 13, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Robert Frost (1874-1963) identified as “an Old Testament Christian” but his belief fluctuated throughout his life. He questioned belief much like many Christians today. He is acknowledged as a critic of the orthodox Christianity of his time, and it is said “For most of his life, Frost vacillated between belief and skepticism, piety and irreverence, submission and rebellion. ‘He tossed the idea of God up and down like a ball,’ said critic Alfred Kazin.” He was another Christian for whom Christianity was not the cross.
Reply

 maryhelena 
 April 13, 2011 at 6:14 pm
The “leave them alone” are my words, in response to your point re the Christians who are not “harmful” re their diluted beliefs. I was under the impression that if they are not “harmful” then let them be….OK, so you want to education them. Humanism? So they stay with their non harmful diluted Christian beliefs? – beliefs to which they have emotional dependencies.
Old ideas are like an old pair of shoes – very comfortable! Wearing in new shoes can certainly be uncomfortable for a while – but sooner or later it just has to be done. Sure, one can’t ‘rip away emotional dependencies’ upon certain ideas – one has to offer different ideas, better ideas. The new ‘shoes’ need to be so attractive that the few days of pain are deemed to be worth their purchase. So, before that New Earth, there has to be a new Intellectual Heaven. Ideas become us – they colour our perceptions and our emotions.
Re the Jerusalem analogy – that’s a matter of perception I’m afraid. A Radical Reformation needs new radical ideas, not simply a tinkering of present ideas. So we differ there. As to suggesting an alternative plan for ‘moving along’ – Well, steph, I think maybe I have – ditch the assumption of an historical gospel JC. The repercussions of such a ditching are immense – all the way from psychology to political ideology. The theology of the cross is very insidious – the French Revolution might have desecrated the churches – theology simply jumped ship – it’s coat of many colours allowing it safe haven in many at unsuspecting harbour…
Reply

 maryhelena 
 April 13, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Thanks steph, for the poem – and , no, I don’t know it. Looking past the cross, the crown etc that’s great poetry and it can give one some sense of peace – but the cross remains that symbol of Christianity; that cross is right there in the gospel storyline – and in order for that peaceful state to be achieved – that cross has to be re-told in other than a literal meaning, ie in other than a flesh and blood historical context. And yes, Wells has a good idea here – he separates the gospel crucifixion storyline from his Galilean preacher figure – thus opening up the possibility that the gospel crucifixion storyline can be considered in a non-historical context. So, that could be considered as step one in the ditching of a historical gospel JC…..
Anyway, that’s not what I’m here for….
As to poems – here is something I put together some years ago – it’s about Ireland, but it’s also about a type of connection that we all feel to our earthly home, “the ‘ground beneath our feet’. (it’s just that the Irish have sung their praises of their land perhaps more than most…)
Of this land its many songs have sung
 But sure they are only a message
 Of something that’s beyond all the saying
 There’s a voice without words that is smiling here
 It draws and binds all those who hear it
 To Ireland for time and a day.
The voice of this land is a sound so sweet
 It’s the sound of melodies sacred and pure
 O’er its fields and its lakes an air is becoming
 It’s breath is the nectar my spirit adores
 For Ireland’s voice it is calling all people to share
 A joy of belonging to this land so fair.
From the mists of it’s lakes and it’s valleys
 A voice that is pure and sublime
 Meets our heart in a moment of gladness
 Oh the beauty of our tie to this land
‘Tis life’s greatest union of reverence
 Between spirit and reality.
Ireland’s gift to the world it’s for sure
 A voice once heard it will always be
 Mystically, magically, inexplicably
 Music of a connection that’s sacred and pure
 To a land that is soft and yielding
 Where our heart and our spirit embrace.
Ireland’s voice oh it’s so compelling
 Our lives it crowns with joy
 For where in the world can such music be heard
 That voices man’s feelings so great
 For connection, for belonging
 To the ground beneath his feet.

 
 
 
 steph 
 April 13, 2011 at 8:03 pm
I think you missed the point about radical education reform and humanism, and educating children and adults out of the need to appeal to supernatural belief. You also missed the point about a plan. To ‘ditch’ is not an articulated plan. You also missed the point that for millions of Christians, Christianity is not the cross (and neither was it for Frost) and it does not include supernatural beliefs. And you also missed the point about the falsity of the Jerusalem analogy. And perhaps a mythicist view, that there was no human Jesus, is an assumption. Neither view can be proved and I have found no mythicist hypothesis convincing. I’m more persuaded by very recent historical arguments – but who knows – and that is not what this post is about, so it really doesn’t matter anyway.
Your poem is pretty. My ancestry is Irish too – Maguire – so all the family stories have that suspicious flavour of heavily romanticised embellishment – as all great storytelling and gospelling does – and mum sang all the old songs. But as a Kiwi I’m fairly immune from feelings of loyalty to any particular land or patriotism, although I love NZ’s natural environment and diversity. I would like more of the world to be that way.
Reply

 maryhelena 
 April 14, 2011 at 3:20 am
Steph: “I think you missed the point…….”
Oh, dear – looks like we are unable to communicate…..
Education: How about putting a copy of one of the books by Wells in every school library – great for an introduction to critical thinking on the gospel JC question; how about offering adult classes for an alternative view of Christianity; how about Humanist documentaries extolling the virtues of a cross free psychology and morality. Too easy, steph, to do this on the quite – nicely nicely so as not to upset those with traditional Christian views. That the Gnu atheists are fighting fit for their world without religion – that should not excuse ‘old’ atheists from their own responsibility to man the barricades for a rational, Humanist, social environment. And, no, it cannot be done on the cheap…
OK, so along with my ‘bulldoze’ you don’t like my ‘ditch’….
The millions of Christians, steph, that you mention, those who don’t hold the cross and supernatural beliefs as their own – then by golly, steph, then they are more than ready to ditch the assumed historical crucified JC. And are then, the ‘old’ atheists letting them down? Those atheists NT scholars who are happy to go on tinkering and thinkering – for no avail and for no ready made audience anyway – their audience of thinking Christians has already jumped the traditional ship….
“…the falsity of the Jerusalem analogy..” I’m afraid I’ll leave that one to history….
“…..no human Jesus, is an assumption”. Maybe read some of the arguments by Wells – once Wells made the split between his Galilean preacher, who was not crucified, and the gospel crucified JC figure – no human, flesh and blood, gospel JC is possible. That is a great starting position. In other words, Wells, by ditching a historical flesh and blood crucified gospel JC – has opened up the way for a non-crucified figure, a flesh and blood figure, to be relevant to the development of early Christian ideas. OK, Wells can’t prove any of that – and that’s because it’s history that is needed not just ideas, however rational they may be….
(Yes, Doherty also, not withstanding his own rhetoric and writings, has something to offer – but that is perhaps not so easily discernible…..and anyway, the man and I are not on ‘speaking’ terms…..
June 2010
“I am going to bow out on any further discussion with Maryhelena. Our respective thought processes simply don’t cross at any point. It is futile from my point of view to try to get her to understand me, or me to understand her. That sometimes happens, and one simply moves on to other things. Thanks, anyway. Earl Doherty”.
February 2001
 Earl
 Mary, I have a feeling that we could spend an unlimited amount of time talking around each other. I truly do not understand what you are getting at. At the very least, it’s murky. But that may be just my
 mindset. In the end, I don’t think it matters. We are approaching this subject from two different points of view, maybe even from two very different mindsets. It’s possible they are both potentially productive,
 in one way or another. I suggest that we both express ourselves as we see fit. I’m not going to pursue this discussion further, since I don’t think it will resolve itself. And it is simply too time-consuming.
Mary
 I, also, do not like to feel that I am talking past someone. Yes, we are each coming to this topic of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth from two different perspectives – let us not then, unnecessarily, seek to
 devalue a perspective that we are not, ourselves, familiar with. For my part, while I applaud your work I do not think it goes far enough.”)
Ireland, yes, I know, I do romanticise it all. Early conditioning and all of that. However, I do think that those who don’t have strong ties to their place of birth – perhaps because they are children of mixed marriages and emigration – do miss out on something of value. Of course, they have other more inclusive values – but specific values, values related to identity, to being, do, by their nature, require a stronger baseline. (my own daughter feels no connection to her part Irish ancestry – born in Kenya and lived most of her life in SA.)
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 Reflections on the Crucifixion « Churchmouse Campanologist says:
 April 21, 2011 at 6:05 pm
[...] I posted a comment on an atheist’s blog asking for his thoughts on Jesus Christ.  One reads so much about their disbelief in God, but [...]
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 steph 
 April 25, 2011 at 12:37 pm
Hi Maryhelena: I see you have posted a very long personal internet conversation (although maybe that is an oxymoron) between you and Doherty. I’m not sure why it is of interest here.
You say I suggest millions of Christians “don’t hold the cross and supernatural beliefs as their own”, which misrepesents what I actually said. They don’t believe the fundamentalist view that no-one can be ‘saved’ if they don’t accept the necessity of the fundamentalist view of the nature of salvation, and the burning of anyone who does not believe this by the devil in eternal hellfire according to the commandment of God. I never said they didn’t have personal theistic or supernatural beliefs.
Joe Hoffmann wrote: “There is no reason to villify God and religion, historically understood, for excesses that, as humanists, we slowly recognized as human excesses and finally learned to combat.” I agree with this completely and also see no reason to villify religious people’s personal unintrusive beliefs. There is far too much constructive and positive work to be done, together, as we share so many common values (social justice, secular society, only but two).
It is interesting you accept the historicity of the destruction at Jerusalem. The argument and evidence for my analysis of early Judaism comes from writings of the time, but there is no evidence I am aware of for the scenario you suggested. In particular, mythicists generally end up with some view of Christianity originating as a Hellenistic cult, which makes the Jewish culture and Aramaisms in the earliest parts of the synoptic Gospels impossible to explain. I do not see how you can appreciate this if you will not read the most recent work by non-religious NT scholars.
Reply

 maryhelena 
 April 25, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Steph: “It is interesting you accept the historicity of the destruction at Jerusalem. The argument and evidence for my analysis of early Judaism comes from writings of the time, but there is no evidence I am aware of for the scenario you suggested.”
I don’t have a clue what you are trying to say here. What on earth should be ‘interesting’ re my acceptance of ‘the historicity of the destruction of Jerusalem”. Would you care to enlighten me? What “scenario” are you talking about?
“And now the Romans set fire to the extreme parts of the city, and burnt them down, and entirely demolished its walls. War 6.ch.9.
AND thus was Jerusalem taken, in the second year of the reign of Vespasian, on the eighth day of the month Gorpeius [Elul]. It had been taken five times before, though this was the second time of its desolation; for Shishak, the king of Egypt, and after him Antiochus, and after him Pompey, and after them Sosius and Herod, took the city, but still preserved it; but before all these, the king of Babylon conquered it, and made it desolate, one thousand four hundred and sixty-eight years and six months after it was built. War. 6.ch.10.
NOW as soon as the army had no more people to slay or to plunder, because there remained none to be the objects of their fury, (for they would not have spared any, had there remained any other work to be done,) Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as were of the greatest eminency; that is, Phasaelus, and Hippicus, and Mariamne; and so much of the wall as enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison, as were the towers also spared, in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was left nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind”. War 7.ch.1.
Now, if you happen to have some evidence that Josephus was telling tall tales – then bring it on. I’m more than open to such evidence…
(the Doherty reference was simply to demonstrate that you cannot know anything about my thinking by assuming I follow Doherty’s ideas….that’s all….)
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Teach Yourself Humanism
by rjosephhoffmann


By Mark Vernon*
Humanism is not a specific doctrine or a unified system of thought. Rather it is a tradition that starts in the Renaissance, gathers momentum during the Enlightenment, and becomes a key feature of the modern world. During this development it embraces a range of possible meanings, principles and practices. It is fundamentally an attitude or spirit that values learning, curiosity and imagination aimed at engaging with the questions of life – personal and political – that human beings face and indeed that make us human. There are therefore many flavours of humanism, many philosophers that can be used to underpin it.
The Renaissance is an inspiration, though not because it was a period in which human beings supposedly awoke from a dark age: the medieval period was one of extraordinary invention and accomplishment. Rather, it is because the Renaissance humanists were able to make something wonderful of their times – in their joy of discovery, embrace of the new, cultivation of character, political reform, critical questioning, passion and potential. This still speaks to us, half a millennium later.
Then came the Enlightenment, and it is the intellectual giants, David Hume and Immanuel Kant, who impress me most. For Hume, scepticism was the natural position for the Enlightenment thinker – scepticism about religion for sure, but scepticism about the fundamentals of science too. Hume was also sceptical about what he called enthusiasm, defined as ‘presumption arising from success’. That could apply to triumphalist rationalism and scientism as much as religion.
 

Mark Vernon
Kant found Hume’s scepticism profoundly unsettling. He wanted to put things on a firmer foundation. And he did so, but only by writing Critiques. In these Critiques, the key issue was understanding the limits of human knowledge. When Kant said that Enlightenment was maturity this is what he meant, being able to live with this finitude and not reach out for false certainty. So we have Enlightenment humanism as scepticism and grappling with the reality of human knowledge and experience.
This I would actually relate to a tradition within religion, though it is one lamentably in decline today. It is called the ‘apophatic’, meaning ‘negative way’. It stands in marked contrast to the ‘cataphatic’, meaning ‘positive way’, the strident assertions of indisputable religious dogma and divine truth.
The apophatic is a way of approaching what is ultimately unknown by identifying what that unknown cannot be. In religion it says God is not mortal (immortal), not visible (invisible) – note, saying nothing positive about God. Its spirit is captured in the biblical story of Moses climbing the mountain. As he went up and symbolically got nearer to God, he did not ascend into greater light and clarity, but deeper cloud and unknowing. Thus, at its core is a sense of the sacred – that which is far greater than you and so takes you out of yourself and into the unknown.
In a way what the apophatic theologians explored was similar to what the sceptical Enlightenment philosophers like Hume and Kant articulated: both identify limits and seek intuitions of what lies beyond. It was called ‘learned ignorance’ by the first Renaissance humanist philosopher, Nicolas of Cusa, and he got the idea from Socrates. Socrates annoyed his fellow citizens in ancient Athens because he showed that the key to wisdom is not how much you know but is understanding the limits of what you know. This dimension reaches back right to the antecedent origins of humanism. It runs right through any honest study of what it is to be human.
It is also this dimension that to my mind is needed to combat contemporary fundamentalisms – religious and scientific – particularly if you want to avoid becoming a humanist fundamentalist in response. It is a kind of committed agnosticism – a juxtaposition of words that only sounds strange, if it does, today.
Echoing the same spirit, the last word can come from a famous humanist and agnostic, the anti-Christian though never quite atheist, Bertrand Russell. Towards the end of his History of Western Philosophy, he reflects on how human beings across the centuries have related to their potential and powers. Sometimes, he believes, they have been too humble. In other periods, too hubristic. And today? He worries that we are at risk of thinking of ourselves as gods.
‘In all this I feel a grave danger, the danger of what might be called cosmic impiety. The concept of ‘truth’ as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check on pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness – the intoxication with power… to which modern man, whether philosophers or not, are prone. I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.’
This ‘cosmic impiety’, the greatest danger of his time, shows no sign of passing. Humanists must ensure that they help mitigate it.
 
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Published: February 7, 2010
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7 Responses to “Teach Yourself Humanism”

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 Ophelia Benson 
 February 8, 2010 at 12:43 am
“The apophatic is a way of approaching what is ultimately unknown by identifying what that unknown cannot be. In religion it says God is not mortal (immortal), not visible (invisible) – note, saying nothing positive about God.”
If one says nothing positive about God (or anything else) then what is one saying? If one says nothing positive about God then why (and how) talk about God at all?
Reply
 
 Malachi M. Nilsai 
 February 8, 2010 at 3:26 am
You remark that Kant opposed skepticism. Then you use him to segue into a remark on the rise of humanism as skepticism.
I’m left a bit boggled, to be perfectly honest. You rightly point out that the thrust of his critique involves establishing the limits of experience. But this bears scarcely any obvious connection to any rise in skepticism that purportedly ensued. And why should it? As you briefly allude, the transcendental logic and aesthetic are foundational in their own right.
Yes, there’s obviously the critique of speculative reason. And maybe Kant has something in common with the apophatic types in this regard.
But let’s not reduce it to slogans. The apophatic sort seem to be anti-foundational just as much as they are anti-fundamentalist. Kant, no way. He would be scandalised to be considered the godfather of an unqualified skepticism.
In other words, Armstrong might be kind of like Kant, but Kant isn’t much like Armstrong. Right?
Reply
 
 Daffyd ap Morgen 
 February 8, 2010 at 4:42 am
In your efforts to conflate humanism with religion, do not forget rational inquiry, the engine of the renaissance you invoke for your purposes.
Reply
 
 Shannon 
 February 21, 2010 at 4:54 pm
This is one of my favorite books on humanism. I liked it so much I actually took the time to write a quick review at Amazon. I think I’ve bought about 10 copies so far. I keep loaning mine out to people and they never give them back.
Reply
 
 Rich Griese 
 April 7, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Very nice article.
Cheers! RichGriese.NET
Reply
 
 Mark Fournier 
 April 8, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Vernon seems to want it both ways here. On the one hand, he flirts with radical skepticism (which Hume considered absurd because to take it seriously removed you from the entire discussion.) But the collapse of certainty does not mean the end of knowledge, nor does it mean that there is no objective reality, and this is what Russel was warning us about. We have far too many ideologues who think that they can create their own realities, and the most frightening thing about these people is that they consider the truth to be a conspiracy–a reality created by someone else. Their solution to the truth is to find out who is responsible and silence them.
And like so many others, Vernon thinks he has discovered a cozy hiding place in apophatic theology, a place where he can believe whatever he likes because no one can question him. But in fact, the very negatives he conceives of are probably irrelevant and orthogonal to the ultimate nature of cosmology–he simply lacks the imagination to go far enough. There is no reason to think that we have evolved the faculties required to understand things at this level; the final answer may be as incomprehensible as 42 in the Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. How long do you have to play word games until you drop the attributes entirely and arrive at “God is not.” Why use the word God at all, but to convince others that you are still on their team? Atheism wants you to leave your church; apophatic theology wants you to burn it down.
Reply
 
 scotteus 
 July 14, 2012 at 12:24 pm
I nice iltte introductory essay, but I always recommend, although it’s a bit outdated Herbert Muller’s “The Use Of The Past”.
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Atheist Martyrs? Gnus to me.
by rjosephhoffmann

“If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason, they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities.” (Edward Grant: God and Reason in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 2001)
 

Roger Bacon, 1220(?)-1290
 
 
Have there been atheist martyrs–women and men who suffered and died as a consequence of their rejection of God?
This thoughtful question came up when I recently suggested that I detect a trend in the small but dwindling new atheist community to pad the bona fides of their young tradition with things that didn’t really happen.  We know that real Gnus love science and aren’t too keen on history, especially a history that suggests that Once upon a Time there was a lonely wood-cutter living good without God by the edge of a forest outside Düsseldorf who kept his opinions about God to himself and was never molested, his humble house never burnt down. You have to admit, that’s pretty dull reading.

The Church did not invent martyrdom, but it perfected it in the ancient world. Christians seemed to thrive on persecution, or at least stories about persecution.  The habit of naming churches after saints originates at the gravesites (real and legendary) of the sacrificed.
Every first year divinity student knows two things about the early Christian writer Tertullian: He said something like “I believe because it is absurd.” (Although he didn’t actually say it that way.)  And he said “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church…the more we are mown down by you [pagans] the more our numbers grow,”  which he did say.
Tertullian was an arrogant, heretic-bashing codpiece who was always unfair in rhetorical battle against his heretical opposites, most of whom were dead when he wrote about them.  He would feel right at home in today’s climate. He still has his admirers.
Because they were certain they were right about the religion thing, Christians developed “martyrologies”–stories about martyrs and their brutal torture and dismemberment and rape at the spearpoint of their pagan oppressors.  This no doubt helped fertilize the field of converts in the way Tertullian intended.  After all, what is a martyr but an imitator of Christ, the ultimate sacrificial victim?
Death of a martyr ca 203
To die like Christ was to be holy–a saint–so that the terms (martyr-saint) became virtully synonymous in the early church.  It was a short-cut, a virtual guaranteeing of heavenly bliss.  It could only be compared to patriotism–dying on the field of battle.  Furthermore, Christians thought it drove the Romans crazy, this immense bravery in the face of torture.  –Except in the little that’s survived by way of commentary, the Romans actually thought Christian bravery was a sham because they expected, like the martyrs in the Middle East today, to wake up in glory and bliss before God’s throne.  That was the payoff, to quote Marcus Aurelius, loosely.
It took until Gibbon’s day, in the eighteenth century,  to sort out the strew.  As the Catholic Church was fully in charge of its own story, he reckoned, the number of martyrs was far smaller–even during the reign of the most vicious of the so-called persecuting emperors, Diocletian (d. 311)–than the Church claimed.  Only when other measures at control failed–normal things like ridicule, calling their men yokels and their women prostitutes, did things turn ugly.  The result?  Less than two years after the death of Diocletian the first edict of toleration was passed and by the close of the fourth century the Church was everything Tertullian hoped it would be.  –Including powerful enough to initiate persecutions of its former oppressors.  What goes around.

But the tendency remained strong in Christianity to use martyrdom as a kind of proof of dues-paying authenticity. There were Protestant martyrs–the famous “Boke” by John Foxe (1563) repeats the early Christian stories and then tells the rest as the tale of the Catholic Church’s persecution of Protestants down through the sixteenth century, creating the standard stereotype of the Catholic Church as the reincarnation of Old Rome. The competition to chalk up numbers continued:  Joan of Arc (French, Catholic, a witch to the English cause, a protectress to the French); Miguel Servetus (a rationalist, executed by Calvin’s order in 1533); Johan Hus (Czech, who condemned indulgences, the Crusades, and lobbied for the liberal ideas of another heretic)–namely John Wycliffe, who escaped execution by sleight and a loyal troupe of students and was dug up after his death and his bones burned for his views on the papacy, the nature of the universe (he admired the atomic theory of Democritus) and his ashes scattered in the river Swift.

Execution of William Tyndale, for translating the Bible into English
There are dozens and dozens of Wycliffes and Hus’s who were treated as badly by decress and councils and the Inquisition.  What the Church seems to have learned from its own exaggerated history of martyrs is that, for organizational reasons,  it paid to be more like the Roman persecutors than like the suffering saints.
But I stray.  Surely if Christians preyed on the doctrinal irregularities of their own, they must have sniffed out the most radical opinion of all and punished it? I mean, of course, the “God question.” As well they did.  But the most radical opinion of all as late as the seventeenth century was that God was not a trinity–Socinianism (early unitarianism) named after two Italian thinkers, the uncle-nephew team of Laelius and Fausto, who if they lived today would run a cake shop in Brooklyn.  Both thought the trinity was non-biblical.  Faustus, the nephew, escaped to (then) religiously liberal Poland to be out of the reach of church scrutiny and died there in 1604.  The theology of the Spanish physician Miguel Servetus (mentioned above) was less accommodating but equally severe: he called the trinity a three-headed dog.  Servetus was sentenced to death simultaneously in Geneva by the protestants and by the Catholic Inquisition at Lyons making him officially the first man without a country.
Not far away, or much removed in time, Giordano Bruno died in 1600, a Domincan priest and by all accounts a brilliant scientist.  Bruno taught a version of the Copernican theory and taught it well enough to find himself in exile all over Europe.

Bruno
Hounded by a reputation for being sarcastic and unable to keep quiet about his unorthodox views, he did what Servetus did: went to Geneva thinking that the Protestant ”capital” would be nore liberal than the largely autonomous cities of the Catholic world. Then to Paris, where he was spotted as an excommunicate; then to Oxford and London, where he may have worked as a spy for a very nervous Elizabeth’s secretary of State, Walsingham.  Then to Frankfurt and Padua, where he was denied a chair in mathematics (it went to Galileo) and finally to Venice, where the Church lost patience with his maneuvers and had him hauled back to Rome for trial.
Bruno’s scientific views were not as well devloped as Galileo’s: at his trials in Rome, he was accused of denying the trinity (by now a favourite charge against intellectuals), believing in metempsychosis (reincarnation), denying the virginity of Mary, and the “real presence” of Jesus in the Eucharist.  These were garden variety charges that could be trumped up against almost anyone who had become inconvenient to the Church, so the radical nature of his opinions is difficult to discover.  He was probably also a pantheist and almost certainly a mystic and magician.
From the Church’s point of view he was another heretic at a time when the Church was fighting both ends against the middle, fragmented in Europe, unable to exercise its will against major problems like Luther, and now a spawn of lesser opinions that might have been greater had they developed into full-fledged movements.  Bruno’s challenge like Wycliffe’s involved early scientific ideas that were echoed in the revolutions of Bacon and Newton, neither of whom, alas, had very revolutionary ideas about religion. Before Bruno was burned alive at the Camo di’Fiori, his tongue was nailed to the roof of his mouth “for all the wickedness he had spewed.” The Cardinal who tried Bruno, Bellarmino, was the same who summoned Galileo to the Inquisition sixteen years later.

Bellarmine, the face of Catholic tolerance
Bruno, like Servetus, and Wycliffe, and Hus, and later on the deist Thomas Aikenhead (d. 1696 in Edinburgh) should be commemorated as pioneers in the rationalist tradition that leads from faith and credulity to shades of unbelief and finally to outright atheism. It is a slow progression, and atheism is a consequence, not the match that starts the fire.
Philosophically, these thinkers (even in the case of Hus and Wycliffe) don’t constitute a single opinion but  grades of skepticism that move steadily from rejection of the core doctrine of the Christian faith for 1200 years–the trinity–to a much wider indictment of the Bible, superstition, the papacy, miracles, and the stranglehold of Aristotelian science.
Aikenhead at his trial was accused of all of this: “[He has taught] That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ.”

“No defence was recorded, but the prisoner did have defence counsel. On December 24, the next day, came the verdict: “that. . . Thomas Aikenhead has railed against the first person, and also cursed and railed our blessed Lord and second person of the holy Trinity, and further finds the other crimes libelled proven, viz. The denying of the incarnation of our Saviour, the Holy Trinity, and scoffing at the Holy Scriptures.” He was sentenced to be hanged on the 8th of January…before making the long walk, under guard, to the gallows. He was said to have died Bible in hand, “with all the Marks of a true Penitent”.
So to the question: Have there been atheist martyrs.  I think the answer is a conditional rather than a resounding No.  Social marginalization and suspicion is not the same thing as martyrdom, not the same as systematic legal persecution.
I understand that Gnu atheists, like the Christian community that was also Gnu once upon a time, crave the legitimacy that comes from being able to show it has suffered.  But history is against that. Being unpopular and being actually burned alive for your beliefs, or lack thereof, is an option foreclosed to atheists by the bravery of women and men who fought the battle against religious oppression one doctrine at a time, paving the way for the Enlightenment, free speech, and constitutional limitations of the church. That’s the real story. And it neither diminishes atheism nor requires it to “credit” its existence to religion in order to acknowledge it.

Medieval (14th cent) illustration of a spherical earth
Yet this puts atheists in the difficult position of celebrating the work of people they regard as deluded, “faithheads,” to use the aspersion, as though history begins with Hume (maybe a deist, fundamentally cagey), Voltaire (a deist), and Tom Paine (not just a deist but one who wanted to surgically remove Jesus from the atrocity of the gospels).  But none of these men died for their secular, anti- ecclesiastical and anti-Biblical ideas. They held a shred of faith disconnected from the realities of religion.
If we scour more thoroughly, we get Socrates and Jesus and maybe Anaxagoras.  All three were charged with impiety by the dominant religious power of their day.  If we believe Xenophon, Socrates took comfort in the fact that the gods would be pleased with his tranquility and that he was pious throughout his life.  Anaxagoras chose the option of exile to Lampsacus for teaching “odd things” about the nature of matter and mind, that the material world was composed of “a thing of finer texture, alike in all its manifestations and everywhere the same–a subtle agent, possessed of all knowledge and power, especially seen ruling in all the forms of life” (Lucretius).  But in either case, “piety” and impiety were connected to performing acts of ritual devotion, not to an intellectual conclusion about the existence of “God.” A great many historians and psychologists have puzzled that it may not have been psychologically possible, prior to this long progression of ideas, to entertain the sorts of doubts about the gods’ existence that is possible in the modern era. ( I disagree with that, but it’s another topic.)
That leaves Jesus, before he became one–a god that is. Radical doubters and dissenters like Paine, Renan, Loisy recognized Jesus as one of their own. The eminently sensible Matthew Arnold, no friend to biblically-based dogmatism, praised his “sweet reasonableness.”
In so many words Jesus rejected much of the Torah and hardly mentions other sections of the Hebrew tradition at all–though he is accused of violating it.  He substitutes an ethic of love and forgiveness for one of pay-back and talion.  He excoriates wealth in a culture that saw material possessions as a mark of divine favour.  He mingles with women and “sinners” in a time when purity laws were scrupulously enforced and fear of contamination had reached superstitious highs.  He shows compassion for people at the margins of a society that disowned the sick as being stricken by God as punishment for unknown sin.   He, foolishly perhaps,  argues his case openly, even when (like Socrates) he is cautioned not to.

Even if only a shadow of a shade of this story is respected, Jesus is an historical event, at least as much of an event as the historical Socrates who also suffers from his own “biography.” Knowing that his words and deeds are going to get him killed, he presses on.  He’s only human after all. From the standpoint of first century Judaism–which is the only way history can fairly view this event–he dies a blasphemer and a heretic.
It seems to me that atheists should acknowledge that the private thoughts of a lonely woodcutter outside Düsseldorf do not form part of the progression of ideas that get us from Epicurus to Bertrand Russell.
When Professor Dawkins in his now famous remark says that “We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further,” he is right in one respect (as well as funny) but wrong in another. Because the process of rejecting 99% of the gods and most of what has  been believed about the remainder is not a conclusion that atheism has forced. Unbelief has been forced to the surface of our consciousness by critical processes that are rooted in religion: in the empiricism of Maimonides;  in Aquinas’s disputational method; in Luther’s critique of Catholicism and sacraments;  in Abelard’s stress on the subjectivity of ethics and Roger Bacon’s contributions to scientific thinking.  In so much more.  Perhaps to state what is too obvious to be obvious to many people: in the fact that the transmission of knowledge through books was the labour of clerics and monks.  Atheism historically–where and through what means–the gods began to be disbelieved in–has not been a conversion-experience, a single moment, or a shuddering recognition on a Tuesday that everything you have been taught is wrong.  It’s also got to be about the freedom to reach that conclusion on the shoulders of the very bright people who suffered along the way, none of whom, as far as I can tell, would qualify as atheists today.

Bacon's illustration in his Optics, 1250
It is strange to me that men and women committed to the paradigm of evolution and historical change are often willing to postulate creation ex nihilo or spontaneous generation for their own ideas.
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Published: April 8, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Catholic Church : Gibbon : gnus : Inquisition : martyrology : martyrs : new atheism : persecution : R. Joseph Hoffmann : saints : suffering : Unitarians ..
41 Responses to “Atheist Martyrs? Gnus to me.”

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 s. wallerstein 
 April 8, 2011 at 4:41 pm
How about adding Spinoza to the list of those heretics who stood up to established religious orthodoxy?
Spinoza was a pantheist of course.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 8, 2011 at 4:42 pm
He should/could be: he lost his job and got thrown out of two traditions for it–one of my favourite guys!
Reply
 
 
 Joseph Segor 
 April 8, 2011 at 6:31 pm
I don’t understand in what respect Dawkins’ witty comment is wrong. He was addressing contemporary monotheists and I assume you agree that he made his point regarding that audience. The comment was not intended to explain the history of skepticism, but it does encompass those skeptics who have not cut all ties with supernaturalism. We, who are not in danger of being burned at the stake for our views, certainly owe a debt to those who did not go one god further, but paid with their lives for denying the orthodoxy of their day. I don’t think that Dawkins would deny the debt.
If atheists want martyrs, all they have to do is go to some Moslem countries and loudly, or maybe not so loudly, proclaim their beliefs.
Reply
 
 steph 
 April 8, 2011 at 7:37 pm
Excellent post. I appreciate your incisive identification of what is really wrong with medieaval Christianity and the courage of those who questioned orthodox belief. You’ve given us a colourful historical analysis without any exaggeration of history at all, and as always, wittily writ. The gnus have got their Harrisy but no gnu martyrs. And I didn’t call anyone bull’s pizzle once. But Fabian said “A coward, a most devout coward; religious in it.” Maybe not religious in their cowardice but fungusmentalism is religious about their ‘belief’.
8X8
Reply
 
 Felix 
 April 10, 2011 at 12:25 pm
“… processes that are rooted in religion”
It seems a bit obvious to me.
The strong philosophical tradition of the Greeks was overrun by the stifling orthodoxy of monotheism and for approx 1000 years innovation ceased.
As intellectual enquiry in the West ever so slowly re-emerged it did so in a Christian environment and in centuries when not only could you be put to death for something a simple as denying “the ‘real presence’ of Jesus in the Eucharist”, but you could also be burnt as a witch.
But more than this, the ancient Greeks had some great ‘scientific’ ideas which could have grown quickly in a couple of centuries, into something much more substantial.
However by the 2nd millennium there really was no way to think of the existence of life and the planet as other than due to an act of creation. Thus the furthest it was sensible to go was to deism, and this far only perhaps in response to the problem of evil.
So, since everybody believed in God (being the best explanation available) one would not expect there to be many atheists available for burning.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 10, 2011 at 12:34 pm
@Felix: History can’t be done as hypothesis contrary to fact. The idea that without Christianity the ideas of the Greeks would have risen like a comet into the night sky is widely discredited, just like the myth of the “dark ages.” To raise the point I raise in the essay: where do you think the ideas of the ancient writers were preserved? Why do you think they were preserved if no one understood them? I know this model, but almost no historian thinks this way about the last two millellenia any longer. It was developed in the 18th century by some very interesting fellows like Gibbon himself, but before the dawn of scientific historiography, and it’s a parody of historical process. Btw, the Romans and Greeks were quite capable of enforcing their own religious orthodoxies before Christianity cam onto the scene.
Reply
 
 
 Felix 
 April 10, 2011 at 12:46 pm
Okay, so I should have stuck to my basic point, which was:
“since everybody believed in God (being the best explanation available) one would not expect there to be many atheists available for burning.”
===
On the other matter, if you will allow the digression, let me put a question instead. Would it be fair to say in the 500 years after Constantine there were far, far fewer philosophical developments than in the 500 or or before?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 10, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Sorry, you’re dealing with a pre-1950 parody of history.. My advice is to give it up.
Reply
 
 
Have Atheists Ever Died for their Lack of Faith? - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education says:
 April 11, 2011 at 10:00 pm
[...] piece entitled “Atheist Martyrs: Gnus to Me” wonders aloud if any atheists have actually died for their lack of faith (the term Gnu is a [...]
Reply
 
 Atheist Martyrs? Gnus to me. « The New Oxonian says:
 April 11, 2011 at 10:35 pm
[...] "If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason, they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities." (Edward Grant: God and Reason in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 2001)       Have there been atheist mar … Read More [...]
Reply
 
 Seth Strong 
 April 12, 2011 at 9:01 am
I think you’re right on characterizing atheist as a result rather than a force because that follows most of my experience of it, characterizing its negative stance this time with a historical experience. As a fan of gnu-atheism I root for some vague form of success but I’m really watching a phenomenon that I haven’t seen before. And that’s not a historical claim, I’m thirty two and there’s also a lot of other things I haven’t seen.
(I love the expanding comment boxes on the website, by the way)
I happily credit older believers with progressive thoughts and sometimes I catch modern day believers being progressive as well. I still think progress results in more and more secularism which weakens the dogmatic political positions of religions voting blocks. Atheism would be that tall tower in the distance getting closer as we advance that secularism even if the tower is still farther out. Belief in teapots in space don’t really concern me in the same way. Maybe I’m crazy for not having noticed culinary objects in orbit and I’m fine with that. I’m even fine crediting an imaginary Jesus with a rebellion against the orthodoxy at the time. After all, he’s an important literary figure and it’s nice to know he’s got his roots in rebellion same as I do.
Reply
 
Melting, melting, all my beautiful wickedness… - Butterflies and Wheels says:
 April 12, 2011 at 7:54 pm
[...] The Hoffmann he quotes is even more optimistic. Have there been atheist martyrs–women and men who suffered and died as a consequence of their rejection of God? [...]
Reply
 
 jose 
 April 13, 2011 at 8:38 am
Hi, there’s something I don’t understand. You said, “I understand that Gnu atheists, like the Christian community that was also Gnu once upon a time, crave the legitimacy that comes from being able to show it has suffered.”
How exactly does suffering give you legitimacy?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 13, 2011 at 10:57 am
I think the idea of suffering and dying for “what you believe” is not an exclusively religious emotion; the Romans were probably the source of the Christian attitude, based on the honor of dying for the “honor” of country on the battlefield, and before the Romans, the Greeks–nothing was more important than the tales of heroes–and a martyr is just a religious hero. We still use the language in modern warfare, don’t we; Lincoln talks about the field at Gettysburg being consecrated with blood. I suspect we are beyond thinking that way, but that does nothing to diminish the way in which historically dying and suffering were thought to confer honor and legitimacy to a cause. “Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed.” (Pericles, Funeral Oration.) I personally reject the idea, on average, of glorious suffering and death; it leads to all kinds of harm. But historically it’s got to be acknowledged as a great social fact.
Reply

 jose 
 April 13, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Thanks for your response. If I understand well this time, it’s not that suffering actually confers legitimacy; it’s just that in ancient times, people used to think it did. Or maybe that it did in ancient times, but not anymore in the present day.
However, if it doesn’t (or at least it no longer does), why do you understand that Gnu atheists crave it?

 
 
 
 SAWells 
 April 13, 2011 at 9:11 am
Since the truth of ideas is unrelated to whether or not people have died for them, I have no idea what point you think you are trying to make. Also you begin by proposing that there is a “small and dwindling” new atheist community, a point not in evidence.
Reply

 Neil Middlemiss 
 April 14, 2011 at 2:04 pm
I don’t see Hoffman claiming that the truth of atheism hinges on claims of atheist martyrs. Rather, I see it as part of a general critique about the illiterate and ahistorical claims of a particular strain of atheism. In this case, Hoffman considers claims of down-trodden, martyr atheists to be an exaggeration.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 14, 2011 at 4:14 pm
@Neil: Thanks for actually reading the essay and not–as I have to think some are–just jumping into the fray.

 
 
 
 maryhelena 
 April 13, 2011 at 6:04 pm
JH: “It is strange to me that men and women committed to the paradigm of evolution and historical change are often willing to postulate creation ex nihilo or spontaneous generation for their own ideas.”
Perhaps the Gnu atheists are failing to acknowledge the heroes and martyrs of the past as their own because of that “faithhead” taint that many of them had. It seems that even the faintest whiff of faith will send the Gnu atheists into a tailspin…
Putting aside the sad case of those who became martyrs in the long struggle for reason and intellectual freedom – it’s heroes of the past, whether martyred or not, that Gnu atheists need to welcome into their historical understanding of just where they have come from. But to do that, of course, means that perhaps there just might be some ‘faithheads” out there today that they might benefit from giving ear to..-.. or at least have to give modern day “faithheads” a little bit of consideration and respect…
A quote I read many years ago has stayed with me: “The emphasis he projects is not, “What great values men are fighting for! But “What greatness men are capable of, when they fight for their values!”. “Man’s loyalty to values, whatever any man’s particular values might be”. That was Ayn Rand writing about her hero, “the greatest novelist in world literature”, Victor Hugo. A man who stood for everything that she rejected:”……..a professed mystic in his conscious convictions, ….a professed altruist,……a professed advocate of socialism,……a professed champion of the doctrine that emotions are superior to reason….” And yet; “Hugo gives me the feeling of entering a cathedral……”.
(yep, great pity she failed in her own philosophy….)
As to atheist martyrs……but don’t martyrs require a cause – and in and of itself, atheism is not a cause at all – so nothing there that would ignite the spark of heresy or betrayal that would bring the axe to their heads. Methinks it’s not being martyrs that the Gnu atheists are concerned about – it’s the question of legitimacy itself. Or perhaps more appropriately, in a world where suffering and notions of a glorious death are no longer highly valued as indicators of legitimacy, the question of validation is more relevant. Acceptance, a pat on the back, for their Gnu approach to a world without religion. “Imagine” a world without religion the battle cry. And yet it’s not imagination that is necessary here – it’s the cold hard facts of reality; religion is here to stay – thus – no validation can be given to any Gnu atheist challenge to this reality.
Reply
 
 Did religion give us doubt? And a note on envy « Why Evolution Is True says:
 April 14, 2011 at 8:49 am
[...] was inspired by Hoffmann’s new piece, “Atheist Martyrs? Gnus to Me,” which makes the same point at much greater length.  I never cease to be amazed at the [...]
Reply
 
 Chuck O'Connor 
 April 14, 2011 at 9:27 am
Theo Van Gogh. There you go, An atheist martyr. Learn about him before you assert that what you don’t understand. Or is valid history only that which has dust on it?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 14, 2011 at 3:58 pm
@ Chuck Surely your realize that Theo was not killed because he was an atheist–In Amsterdam? Really you thought that?
Reply
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 14, 2011 at 7:58 pm
@Chuck, I don’t have to “learn” about Theo, btw, I knew him.
Reply
 
 
No gods, no masters…and NO MARTYRS | Celebs, News and Gossips says:
 April 14, 2011 at 11:57 am
[...] Berlinerbau is one such infidel locked in a medieval mind; he links approvingly to a long-winded, plodding essay by R. Joseph Hoffmann, who reminds me of nothing so much as a pompous clergyman, who has little too [...]
Reply
 
New Atheist Invective-Based Life Form « Choice in Dying says:
 April 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
[...] New atheists, apparently, make no distinctions between different modalities of religious belief, spend most of their time dreaming up new terms of abuse for religious believers and atheists who do not share their stridently militant form of unbelief, and think of themselves as without historical antecedents, self-created apart from the history of religion and its related forms of disbelief, and thereby representing a wholly new life form, described by Berlinerblau in his latest jeu d’esprit as “invective-based” (as opposed, one assumes, to carbon-based, and thus, in some sense, as robotic and non-human). No wonder Berlinerblau and Hoffmann raise the question about whether there have been any atheist martyrs — Berlinerblau in the piece already linked, and Hoffman in his cutely named “Athiest Martyrs? Gnus to Me.” [...]
Reply
 
 Nameless Cynic 
 April 14, 2011 at 2:51 pm
See, what you’re failing to understand is that atheists aren’t held together by one generalized, over-arching philosophy. They’re a collection of individuals, with numerous different viewpoints, moral foundations and belief systems. The only thing they all have in common is a failure to believe in a myth.
That being said, “atheist martyrs” don’t need to be people nailed to the cross of disbelief (so to speak). In essence, any person killed by a believer and specifically due to that person’s religious mania) can be considered an “atheist martyr.” All the victims of the Son of Sam; Chester Badowski Jr., and his wife Christine; Joshua Hagerman; Michelle Cazan; anyone who died because “God” told the other guy to kill them.
The difference is, we don’t venerate our martyrs because of their deaths. Not worshipping a death cult, it’s easier for an atheist to say that killing is wrong.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 14, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Do you mean refusal in “The only thing they all have in common is a failure to believe in a myth.” because presumably you think they shouldn’t believe in it, not that they lack capacity. -PS, a lot of people say killing is wrong, even the ancient Hebrews “got” that much. It just hasn’t been entirely effective, has it?
Reply
 
 
 Anon 
 April 14, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Tl;dr,
Atheists have no martyrs
 Deists made discoveries that they were persecuted for
 Therefor
 Atheism is wrong.
A long, rambling, unfocused screed that leaned heavily on a moot point. Maybe the reason we don’t have martyrs is because we don’t celebrate death. We cherish life, and the things done with this short time we have, unlike the standard flavor of religious thought that focuses on a ‘hereafter’.
Reply
 
 zaybu 
 April 20, 2011 at 1:18 pm
I think you’re missing something vital in regard to today’s atheists. It’s not through an examination of the historical record of heretics and sceptics that atheists have arrived at their position, not that I want to diminish history of its value, but it is through their knowledge of science. It’s what science has demonstrated: evidence to support a claim, and its ability of self-correction in the face of new evidence, what is sorely missed in religion. It’s the dissonance and often the blatant hypocrisy in denying the contradictions, absurdities and the lies that underpin much of religious thinking that has driven away many among our young towards a healthier scepticism and atheism. In that worldview, the need of martyrs is anathema. It’s a reminder of what is worst in religion: people flying airplanes in buildings, or the old crusades of Christianity. It’s a deep desire not to repeat those mistakes.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 20, 2011 at 3:33 pm
This is an interesting response. But science qua science can only raise the question of God indirectly. It is not part of the subject matter of any purely naturalistic inquiry. History and to a lesser extent philosophy have a great deal to say about the inquiry.
Reply

 Paul Prescod 
 April 22, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Am I really undestanding you correctly? “Science qua science can only raise the question of God['s existence] indirectly, but History can address it DIRECTLY? Why do you denigrate science’s “indirect” approach to the question of God and then praise history for having “a great deal to say about it.” Science also has a great deal to say about it indirectly.
Or directly, if we are pitting science against the literal truth of a particular holy book.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 22, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Since when is indirectly the same as denigration.

 
 
 
 zaybu 
 April 21, 2011 at 5:54 am
That’s true. But then the question for many atheists becomes, can God be investigated through scientific inquiry? We’ve had 400 years of scientific inquiry which has produced no result. And then if God is outside our realm, beyond the physical world, an unknown quantity that is unknowable to us, then his existence becomes superfluous. All the attributes we assigned to god, the conventional all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, becomes wishful thinking, let alone that these attributes seem often contradictory in the epicurean sense.
I need to add that among these atheists, there is a sense that philosophy hasn’t done its job, ie, the famous Hawking’s “philosophy is dead”. Mind you many of those accusations towards philosophy can be directed at science as it has delved in the last 30 years into the kind of speculative world that philosophy is often accused of, mainly, that of String Theory, Multiverse and Anthropic Principle. Ironically, this has given an opening for theists to indulge in their fantasy, often appropriating the science to justify their claims, needless to say to the detriment of those same science-oriented atheists.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 21, 2011 at 8:59 am
Good pionts, Felix: And I can agree that philosophy has been a weak partner in modern discussion.
Reply
 
 Paul Prescod 
 April 22, 2011 at 4:09 pm
> We’ve had 400 years of scientific inquiry which has produced no result.
That’s incorrect. 400 years of scientific (and historical) inquiry have proved that many holy books are factually incorrect. Only in a philosopher’s sitting room could one say that this is “no result.” Culturally and historically speaking it is a tremendously important result. Fundamentalist Christians certainly think it is important: many of them discourage their children from researching dinosaurs, evolution, etc.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 22, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Not a philosopher–I’m an historian. I regard history as a direct claim against both the idea of God and most doctrines; what did you think I was arguing?

 
 
 
 Felix 
 April 21, 2011 at 8:43 am
“If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason, they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities. (Edward Grant: God and Reason in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 2001)”
I just noticed this quote at the top of the article. It strikes me as a bit odd.
Were the Greek philosophers part of “the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities”?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 21, 2011 at 2:08 pm
I don’t think that’s the point of the quote; obviously no one is denying the immense importance of Greek thought. The question which was answered badly for over a century, especially by early modern historians like Gibbon, was “How was it mediated”? There is no doubt among serious scholars of the Middle Ages these days about the mediating influence of scholasticism, the disputational method, the importance of monastic schools, and the emergence of universities and libraries which preferred learning against the odds of very rough politics.
Reply
 
 
 zaybu 
 April 21, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Felix, you bring out a good point. One cannot neglect the tremendous contribution of Islam during its golden age. In Cordoba during the tenth and eleventh centuries, one finds an immense intellectual centre, where Christians, Jews and Muslims interacted in an unprecedented level, making huge strides in the development of science and mathematics, and reviving the Ancient Greek philosophers which spurred later on the Renaissance. Ibn al-Haytham who discovered the law of inertia 600 years before Newton and the pioneer of the scientific method, is considered by many as the father of science.
Reply
 
[ad hoc] Christianity , Archive » Episode #16: Blogosphere roundup, April 20, 2011 says:
 April 21, 2011 at 11:34 pm
[...] Biblical World @ The Biblical WorldBetween Fear and FaithR. Joseph Hoffman @ The New OxonianAtheist Martyrs? Gnus to me.Eric Reitan @ The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian PerspectiveHell, Bell, and [...]
Reply
 
Dude – Title II of the Federal Civil Rights Law of 1964 | Butterflies and Wheels says:
 October 10, 2011 at 8:12 pm
[...] There is no stigma! Everybody knows that. It’s all just a big cry-baby fuss by gnu atheists. Joe Hoffmann said so last April, and Jacques Berlinerblau totes agreed with him. Share this:FacebookTwitterEmailPrint Posted in [...]
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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


The Myth of Reason
by rjosephhoffmann

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
 How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick (Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1900)
“You can’t fool me. There ain’t no sanity clause.” (Chico Marx, Night at the Opera, 1935)

Once upon a time, believing in God was unfashionable. Now to come out an Unbeliever is almost as cool as–well, you know. Especially now that we know the Protestants were right in the sixteenth century about the Pope being the anti-Christ and how religion is really just the Devil’s costume party.
The problem is, now that everyone’s sticking it to religion, pop atheism is becoming as dull as people from Wyoming.
Imagine the following scene:

“Hey, Winston.”
 “Hey, Sally.”
 “What’s up?”
 “Not much, how about you?”
 “Still blogging about how fucked up religion is, though, right?”
 “Not so much. Can’t think of anything new to say.”
 “Yeh, me too. It’s like Dawkins said it all.”
 “Or Hitchens. Hitchens had a lot of good points.”
 “Good times.”
 “I got no spin.”
 “Not even. My religious friends have started talking to me again.”
 “Not good.”
 “Really, right? And when I reminded Jackie I don’t believe in God and how fucked religion is, she said good luck with that. Didn’t quote a single verse”
I’m not sure when pop atheism became unnecessary–but my notoriously eccentric opinion is that New Atheists done it in. Gave it too much oxygen, they did. “Weak opinions need but little air.”
The story hasn’t been about God–or his death or absence–for a long time now. It’s been about them, and what they think of him, or what their fan club thinks about them.
That’s important. Because in classical unbelief, whether we’re talking about Shelley or Hume, Dostoevsky or Huxley, it was mainly about him and the consequences of getting on in our moral life without the benefit of him. But that was yesterday. Yesterday’s gone.

Now it’s a repetitious lecture given mainly by pedants with a toff accent (a beard, or academic promise, will substitute for the accent if you’re American) who think that while God may be dead, he won’t lie down.
So time for someone to say, “Gracious me, you’re right. I don’t know how I missed three centuries of carping about God and religion. That’ll teach me to doze through philosophy classes. There isn’t a God. There never has been. Not  really I mean. Just stories and theological postulates and churches. All a great waste of time and real estate. We’d better shut up now and stop being so damned reasonable. [pause] So…what do we talk about now?”
Once Upon a Time in the West
Time was, atheism was quaint and curious, distaff, contrary and therefore necessary. That was when people actually believed in the things they were supposed to believe in: the trinity, the Virgin birth, creation in six days (weekends off), sin, forgiveness of sin, life everlasting, transubstantiation, infallibility (papal or biblical–you choose), the holiness of priests and the wisdom of rabbis. That’s the short list, by the way, but it’s getting shorter.
Nowadays religious people just say they believe in the paraphernalia. Because they think they need to appearto be who they always thought they were: home-schooled Baptists, “pro-life” Catholics, liberal, all-embracing protestants, culturally rejectionist evangelicals–that sort of thing. Asking a religious person of the American species if he believes in some doctrinal alphabet is a bit like asking him if he believes in dressing warm in winter.
But the polls I read tell a different story. They suggest that to self-identify only with a denomination or a univocal religious position is becoming more and more rare, even among people with very white teeth and broad smiles who say “Christian” when you ask them their sexual preference.

When the beliefs I just named ruled the hearts and minds of European peasants, as opposed to school boards in Oklahoma and Texas, they were really believed. They had to be because the most ignorant people in the world were being taught these “truths” by the glittering brights of their day, intellectual thugs who had the power to enforce their gibberish with penalties ranging from arduous fasts (not recommended if you’re undernourished already) to excommunication–a sentence of spiritual death and existential despair.
But the brightest and best of our day are not bishops and Oxford friars. That puts religion in a corner it has not been in, fully, until the twentieth century, playing defense for a “narrative” that is no longer compelling, clinging (selectively) to doctrines that seem either fanciful, impossible, injurious or wrong, and where its explanation of the world and recipe for human happiness, based on a world-denying hope for future, unmortgaged treasure, seems–doomed.
The inversion of authority and explanation from religious to secular changes everything. Religious persons, caught up in without catching onto this new reality, are seldom aware of the shift. And they are encouraged in their wistfulness by politicians and popes whose job now seems to be polishing the illusion. They live in a world where change is rapid, certain and financially profitable, even for them, but still revere “timeless truths” that are neither.
Atheists, who often complain about the second bit–the culpability of religion and politics in encouraging fantasy–need to be more attentive to the first bit–the difficulty of accepting a reality that may take another century (or longer) to be fully formed and probably will be born without an atheist midwife. After all, atheism is neither science nor authority. Rather than being an explanation of the world, it is only a stance toward implausible explanations.
Predictions about the end of religion and the dawn of a new age of scientific progress are centuries old now. They have been wrong on two counts. Religion hasn’t gone away and science has not vindicated the “reasonableness” of the species.

I don’t believe for a minute that even the prayingest, spirit-stuck pentecostal, in the privacy of her trailer, doesn’t have moments of serious doubt about her beliefs. Even Jesus-besotted Oklahomans live in a world where religious belief, every time it bumps up against scientific explanation, comes out a loser.
Believers (who come in different wattages, by the way) feel besieged by a world that leaves almost no room for traditional belief and value. Many of those beliefs are foolish and some of the values are dangerous and risible. But not all. When the congregation of the Abilene Temple Assembly of God try to be faithful to inherited religious ideas, in the same way they try to be faithful to their marriages, the results are…mixed. As a lived thing, they feel good when they are being good about religion, just as they feel good when their marriage is going well and the bills are paid–if that isn’t saying the same thing. It is not unreasonable or criminal to prefer security to anxiety.

For most of us (and not just people in Oklahoma) the “normal” state of affairs is to prefer the security of the familiar to what you don’t want to risk or lose because you don’t fully understand it, or can’t fully judge the consequences of not having it anymore. Religion is like that. It may be true that smart people find the immensity of the star-spangled cosmos more awesome than the idea of a creator and cosmic father. But smart people should also be able to apprehend the creature-feeling that has found immensities and galaxies empty of any meaning beyond their mere existence.
Yes, I know: we’re meant to take creationists and “Dims” as a “threat” to civilization and progress, and to bristle every time someone says that America is a Christian country. But, Jaysus help me, I don’t. I just think this is a position into which the course of knowledge has shoved the people who got a D- in high school biology their third time round. Atheism will never reach them. If religion has not made their life better, no religion will make it immeasurably worse.
Besides, loads of what the faithful believe and assume to be true is neither written down in Scripture nor taught by any church.
I heard from a Catholic student two weeks ago that her mother had received a “dispensation in the ‘nineties to have an abortion.” When I looked skeptical (did she mean for an annulment or permission to marry a non-Catholic?) she said, “No, really.” Remind me to review the documents of Vatican II again for this loophole.

And some years ago, a Christian student of mine regaled me with an interpretation of Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (when to have a disobedient son stoned to death by the city elders) in which he concluded that the families for whom this law was intended were “not Jewish.” “That makes all the difference,” I said. God is indeed good.
Most Catholics who are militantly anti-abortion are not so militantly protective of the pope’s superhuman authority–from which the doctrine derives. They think of course, that the Church and the Bible are always in harmony because that’s what the Church wants people to think. You cannot be a good Catholic and believe otherwise, but you cannot be a bishop and believe that. Most protestants who cling to the literal meaning and inerrancy of scripture are really addicted to the ingenuity of private interpretation, the only way to get around its embarrassments and fatal flaws. God is as absent from these theological gymnastics as he is from Lucretius’ universe.
All of which is to say that unlike the atheist caricature of religious belief, the mistaken idea that by trivializing the complex you are just simplifying an equation in order to “solve”a problem, religion isn’t simple. It is unsimple both because it emanates from the complexity of human cognition and behavior going back to the formative age of the species and because the behavioral and cultural systems it has created flow outward; their direction cannot be reversed to a single source easily–maybe not at all.
It’s a favorite ploy of the new atheists especially to say that religion is the simpleton’s method for explaining the world and nature without astronomy and physics–a “default position” for dummies who don’t understand science. Maybe so.

But even if that judgment holds water, from the standpoint of the social sciences anyway it is merely a shabby and unscholarly opposite, the default position of men and women who don’t understand religion.
Maybe this is why so few serious scholars who happen to be unbelievers (most, in my experience) have time to be public about their atheism and why the sharpest criticism of the atheist popularizers comes from within the academy, where (by the way) the serious study of religion takes place.
More critically, it needs to be pointed out that the books on the subject have been written by men with credentials no more adequate for writing about God and religion than I would have writing about the phylogeny of nematodes (about which, however, I am endlessly curious.) Which is to say: the New Atheism by its amateurism and short-cutting undermines the work of description and analysis that might make unbelief a better understood phenomenon in the contemporary world rather than, as it is in the hands of the simplifiers, an underanalyzed “position” on a subject that is greatly misunderstood.
The Myth of Reason: Of Self-Evident Truth
Is the non-existence of God a self-evident truth? It’s a fair question and I would like to see it debated by Aquinas and Ayer, preferably in Latin.

One of the reasons I have trouble with the American Declaration of Independence is that it enshrines the concept of self-evident truth, a phrase propagated in the eighteenth century by men who believed in the myth of the Reasonable Man and Common Sense. It was a significant moment in the history of the West because by propagating the myth it became possible to believe in your own reasonableness–just as centuries before, believing in the myth of salvation encouraged you to believe that you were on the fast track to heaven.
But let’s not forget, for most “men” of the Enlightenment, belief in God was both commonsensical and reasonable. Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man is one of the most confident poems ever written, its central message being that the God of Reason has put us on earth to figure things out (“Say first, of God above or Man below/What can we reason but from what we know?”). And as for common sense, sometimes considered the underpinning wisdom of the American form of democracy–a structure built on the shoulders of farmers and laborers (don’t mention the slaves), not on gentility and inherited wealth (don’t mention the robber barons of industry and trade): Just look at the silly governmental structure Americans put into place in 1789, only because the revolutionary horde couldn’t wait for the British monarchy to descend into the irrelevance that was its fate. Can you imagine a reasonable organ of government anywhere in the world creating the filibuster?
I know freethinkers are an ornery bunch when it comes to packaging, but most are happy to believe in the equality, liberty and good life decreed as the gifts of an impressive creator to his remarkable creature without pausing to consider it’s a package deal. No creator, no self-evident truth, no gifts.
Would explicit atheism have helped us to bring about a better system? Would the cult of Reason have spread if, instead of doubting the Virgin birth, as Voltaire, Jefferson and Paine did openly, they would have begun by decrying the backwardness of the populace (which was pretty backward and remains stubbornly so) and sponsored blasphemy contests instead?
The proto-unbelievers of the Age of Reason could make a distinction between belief in God as a premise (or a useful metaphor for excellence), perhaps even a necessary fiction, and belief in a church that claimed proprietorship of the concept.
The great intellectual battle of the age wasn’t about whether God existed (though it was discussed) but how to wrest him from the pharisees who entombed him in church dogma. Most, in fact, tried to do the same thing (unsuccessfully) with the historical Jesus, for whom they had an intuitive respect. A bit later, the poet Matthew Arnold effused about the “sweet reasonableness” of Jesus’ character and message.
Beyond the Myth of Reason: Intolerance?
One of the reasons I’m not a cheerleader for the “New Atheism” (as anybody paying attention to this blog knows) is that it exploits the myth of Reason after rejecting the myth of God. It takes the reason-myth as self-evident truth, which is a very dangerous way to handle any myth, including theistic ones.
True, these are different myths with different coefficients (reason is human, God divine). But the reification of reason is a cheat. A cheat because reasonable people find different things reasonable, and many of these things are as crazy as ever rang a belfry bell: eugenics, nuclear proliferation, cheap energy, strip mining, even the war on Terror–yes, even that, a bicameral legislature.
For every Jew killed by the Catholic Inquisition, ten people have been killed by science and reason, millions using the the best Nazi technology, thousands in Stalin’s pogroms and to bring the Cold War in with a bang at Los Alamos. Putting Science in God’s throne doesn’t make the diktats humane: it just changes tyrants. Atheism of a certain stripe descends into intolerant fanaticism. It becomes a cause, an organized frenzy for people out to document their liberation from the demons of ignorance.
Needless to say therefore that it appeals to people who need demons to feel like angels, a terribly religious emotion.
Do I exaggerate? Not when a New Atheist website screams:
“Wake up people!! We are smart enough now to kill our invisible gods and oppressive beliefs. It is the responsibility of the educated to educate the uneducated, lest we fall prey to the tyranny of ignorance.”
Holy Mary: I wish I had a plowshare to beat into a sword.
Popular Atheism has become unnecessary partly because it became dull at the same moment it became popular, loud when it might have begun to talk in reasoned measure. Like the brightest flashing of a meteor before it becomes interplanetary dust, or the point at which milky sludge becomes ice cream, just before it melts.
So now what do we talk about?
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Published: April 26, 2010
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: humanism : new atheism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion ..
22 Responses to “The Myth of Reason”

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 steph 
 April 27, 2010 at 2:30 am
I wonder what the credentials of the educated are who are supposed to educate the uneducated. I think the thing to talk about now is about moving forward with neo secular humanism, and inclusiveness and social harmony, morality, tolerance, health and education, equality, fairness, the environment, personal happiness and independence, empathy, progress and reason when it’s about critical thinking and evidence. And global action and peace.
I’m fascinated by the phyogeny of lizards – I can see them often. Thank goodness I can’t see any of those horrid little worms.
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 SocraticGadfly 
 May 19, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Excellent thoughts. Of course, the “New Atheists” could start back in the Enlightenment, with St. David of Hume’s observation, “reason must be the slave of the passions,” or look at how modern cognitive science and behavioral psychology have scientifically shown are relative lack of reason.
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 Dwight Jones 
 June 5, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I see a certain parallel between yours and Kurtz’ tenure at CFI. Unwilling to stoke the atheist fires and worse, preaching Humanism per se – death by bunga!
Neo-Humanism it is, until we reform again under our own banner and covenant never to discuss religion again..
Reply

 steph 
 June 5, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I think so, a progressive humanism, beyond religious differences, inclusive, and about education, exploration and imagination (as on another post here)
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 Pacotheus 
 July 7, 2010 at 9:48 pm
Yes, there are atheists who seem to think that atheism is the end when it’s just the beginning. But when someone first breaks out of prison I think they can be forgiven for supposing that they have “arrived” when their journey has, in fact, only begun. Show them the way instead of berating them for their misunderstanding.
As for reason being the slave of the passions, all Hume meant is that reason does not tell you what to desire. It only tells you how to go about satisfying what you desire and also helping you to determine whether what you desire is good for you. Reason being slave of the passions does not mean pointing the way either to theology or something like theology that can justify whatever we wish to do whether it is reasonable or not.
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 The Myth of Reason (via The New Oxonian) « The New Oxonian says:
 September 25, 2010 at 1:03 pm
[...] When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick (Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1900) "You can't fool me. There ain't no sanity clause." (Chico Marx, Night at the Opera, 1935) Once upon a time, believing in God was unfashionable. Now to come out an Unbeliever is almost as cool as–well, you know. Especially now that we know the Protestants were right in t … Read More [...]
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 steph 
 September 25, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Brilliant. Brilliantly Bright. Superwit, so pertinently poignant, packed with important points. There’s so much in here and it’s even better somehow the second time up. We have come from the days when religion was fashionable, with the glittering Brights, all tyrannical “intellectual thugs”, to the fashionable non religion of today, with the new thugs, Four Horsemen, the real “dimwitted Dims”. The old tyrants have merely been replaced by new tyrants, all the same…
So what to talk about now?
Now let’s talk about tropical islands, licking popsicle ice, chocolate, whiskey, the good true and beautiful – music, art and poetry and probably the great big free and open ocean. Or perhaps just talk about nothing at all and enjoy the simple luxury of silence.
(sp phylogeny)
x
Reply
 
 Seth Strong 
 September 27, 2010 at 9:12 am
The problem with atheism is going to be the same one as the problem with Christianity, you don’t have homogeneous people. You have many people trying to make sense of the social structures that were here when we got here. What appears to be an old news atheism has all the nuances to the people who care to think on such things as any idea. People are trying to get to the heart of what it is they believe and what that belief should prompt in terms of actions.
In response to the question “So what to talk about now?” on one hand, the world of topics are our oysters but yet I’m commenting here and so did Steph. We’re talking about what we are still thinking about. So for all the amusement of atheists being antiquated contrarians now that everybody is a contrarian, what’s this post but contra-contrarian? I, for one, am on a topic that I’m still putting a lot of thought into.
By all means discuss what is or isn’t working. I think these topics are interesting and relevant. But I think it’s tongue in cheek or careless to suggest that these very same people including Dawkins, or Hitchens don’t find pleasures in the smaller things as well. Just like the author of this post, I’d imagine they think on their philosophies on belief and they take their relaxation, appreciation for family, and such according to their own temperament.
The limelight atheists can sometimes cause us to forget the real people sharing the label. I’m sure there are muslims, Christians and more that feel that tongue in cheek comments often forget how human the bearers of the respective beliefs and non-beliefs are.
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 s. wallerstein 
 April 10, 2011 at 1:22 pm
That would be a good subjec for a blog: why are we still talking about the New Atheists?
I once had a girl friend, and our relationship was entirely based on our contempt for a certain group of persons. When we finally managed to escape from that group of persons, our relationship fell apart, because the only thing we had in common was our rejection of said persons.
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 Herb Van Fleet 
 April 10, 2011 at 2:57 pm
I see this is a re-post from April, 2010. I hadn’t yet signed up for your blog then, so I’ll comment now.
First and foremost, please quit picking on my home state of Oklahoma. I know we’re the poster child for Christian fundamentalism, but Mississippi is a close second. Plus they have the “Klan,” the Neo-Nazis, and many chapters of the Aryan Nation. Good pickin’s there. So, please leave the Okies to me and my merry band of heathens. We’re having way too much fun.
OK, on to Reason as Myth. The way I see it, these days, and for many centuries past, the harm done in the name of religion has been pretty much limited to the Christians and the Muslims, and here in the U.S. of A., the Protestants. As science has advanced, the beliefs of these religious groups have been, much to their dismay, falsified and shown to be mere myth and wishful thinking. Faced with this dilemma, they ask, naturally, what would Jesus do? And, even though “punt” is the correct answer, they opted to perpetuate an untruth. Call it a lie. Call it that.
Thus, reason gets checked at the door. And, damned if this hasn’t fooled the atheists. They think they are arguing with well reasoned but fatally fallacious beliefs. But, nooooo! The nonbelievers are actually dealing with a big fat lie. Of course, exposing the lie may get you stoned . . . to death. On that point, I leave you with the following (substitute “religion” for “the state:”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
 – Joseph Goebbels
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 s. wallerstein 
 April 10, 2011 at 8:26 pm
It’s a question of variables, I think.
The New Atheists seem to want to reduce the world to a few basic variables.
Whether I like it or not, new variables constantly
 make themselves present to me. In fact, there are more variables at each moment than I feel comfortable with or can handle.
You might see it as the difference between a scientist, who strives for the simplest possible explanation and a novelist who lets the complexity of life flood his or her mind.
In my opinion, phenomena as complex as religion can better understood with the pen of a novelist or the camera of a documentary film-maker than with the equations of a scientist.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 10, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Well said, Sam: I like that analogy. A lot.
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 artm 
 April 11, 2011 at 4:29 am
Human body is another example of a complex system with many variables. It is much easier to explore human body with the pen of a novelist then with a scalpel of an anatomist. Doesn’t mean anatomists should have given up.
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 s. wallerstein 
 April 11, 2011 at 6:44 pm
I would compare religion to the human mind rather than to the human body.
Can you explore the human mind with a scalpel? Probably not. You can explore the brain with a scalpel, but you need the novelist or the introspective (or empathetic) observer to explore the mind.
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 artm 
 April 12, 2011 at 3:18 am
Body has many variables. One of them is mind. It is not an “independent” variable, but novelist would often rather forget about the underlying brain and concentrate on mind alone. Psychiatry, psychology, neurobiology and other disciplines on the other hand explore mind in relations to other “variables” of a human.
I’m not against novels as tools for understanding people (their minds or their religions). But I disagree with dismissing “equations” as bad tools for understanding complex phenomena.

 
 artm 
 April 12, 2011 at 5:15 am
Or different take:
religion is a complex phenomenon with too many variables to be understood.
 a novel is a complex phenomenon with too many variables to be understood.
how is a novel a solution then? either it simplifies its subject (limits the number of variables) or it is just as complex and hence just as unintelligible.

 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 12, 2011 at 7:42 am
Agreed that psychiatry and experimental psychology can tell me a lot about the way the mind works.
However, if I want to understand how a specific human mind works, say, to understand what my woman companion’s love for me means to her, while not discarding what I’ve learned from psychiatry and psychology, I need to open myself to listening to her, to observing her, to paying attention how other women, perhaps in novels, perhaps in poetry, describe what their love for their mates means to them.
Maybe the new atheists need to listen to religion, not only to the explicit discourse of religion, but to what lies behind that discourse.

 
 artm 
 April 13, 2011 at 3:31 am
One would look in different novels and poetry for understanding of an abusive mother. Even if she’s one’s father’s loving companion.

 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 13, 2011 at 9:22 am
artm:
Step-families aren’t easy nor are non-step families.
 Perhaps the myth that all families must be loving causes more damage than anything else. Love cannot be willed, while respect can. That all families, step and non-step, be respectful seems a more realistic goal.
I’ve been a not entirely voluntary step-father for the last 6 years. I’m not in love with the child, now age 10, nor is he with me. I fulfil the adult caretaker role, but I keep my distance from him and he from me. There’s no abuse, but there is no affinity. Affinity also cannot be willed.
From the way your post is worded, I gather that the woman is your step-mother, not your biological mother. If not, my apologies.
In any case, literature, especially folk tales, are full of evil and abusive step-mothers.

 
 artm 
 April 13, 2011 at 2:52 pm
What I meant is: you suggested learning about mind by reading fiction about like minds. Remember, “mind” was a metaphor for “religion”? You are tolerant towards religion, as far as I can tell, you’d chose particular sorts of novels to understand it. New atheist are less tolerant – religion is far from “woman companion” to them, more like evil step-mother – they pick up a different novel and learn different things. Literature is full of evil priests. It’s difficult to right prejudice with fiction.

 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 13, 2011 at 4:39 pm
artm:
I’m curious about religion. Religion is not just a set of beliefs, but a way of life for the majority of our fellow human beings; and even many of we skeptics or atheists, as Nietzsche often points out, are unconsciously motivated by ideas or ideals with their root in our religious heritage.
It seems strange to me that people as well-educated and highly intelligent as the New Atheists content themselves with a simplistic fairy tale version of religion.
If I had a wicked step mother, I would like to understand why she is wicked or if she really is wicked, especially if I had to deal with her on a daily basis, as most of us have to do with religious people.
The examined life is not worth living, they say, and if I agree with that (and I do, at least not worth living for me), then I’d best take a good look at religion, even if I have basically a negative view of it.
I was educated as a Jew, and my religious education bored me terribly. It made no sense to me, and I refused to be bar mitzvahed. At age 14 I mocked religion with all the fervor of a New Atheist.
I am still an atheist, but with the years religion has come to interest me more, as have so many things that I rejected as a teenager. As a teenager, I was trying to construct my own identity and in order to do that, I needed to mock and scorn religion and the establishment values of the day.
Now that my own identity, for what it’s worth, is fairly well defined, I can relax my defense mechanisms against religion and all the values that I rejected. I wonder why the New Atheists, most of them almost as ancient as I am, cannot relax their their anti-religious Maginot Walls either.

 
 
 
 Ed Jones 
 April 11, 2011 at 11:05 am
This discussion of Reason as Myth, ending with the question: So now what do we think about?; forces the following: “When so many believe that natural science can and will answer all questions worth asking, we best return to (the reasoning of those who can be named as) the greatest physicists the world has ever known. All of these pioneering physicists believed that both science and religion, physics and spirituality, were necessary for a full and integral approach to reality (answer the why of existence) but neither could be reduced to or derived from the other. Physics can be learned by the study of facts and mathematics, but mysticism (true religion) can only be learned by a profound change of consciousness. They uiformaly rejected the notion that physics proves or supports mysticism, and yet each and every one of them was an avowed mystic. How can this be? Very simply, they all realized that, at the very least, physics deals with the world of form (shadows and symbols not reality), and mysticism deals with the formless (Ultimate Reality). Both are important, but they cannot be equated”. (Quantum Questins by Ken Wilber, a compendium of virtually all of the significant writings on mysticism by these greatest of physicists.)
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Dawkins v God: Stop the Fight, by Oliver Kamm*
by rjosephhoffmann

Oliver Kamm’s review of The God Delusion originally appeared in The Times on November 2nd, 2006.  Educated at Oxford and the University of London, Kamm is the author of Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy (2005), an advocacy of interventionism in foreign policy. He is a leader writer and columnist for The Times. He describes his politics as left wing.

Thomas Aquinas’s proofs of the existence of God “don’t prove anything,and are easily . . . exposed as vacuous”, wrote Richard Dawkins in The Times this week. Aquinas also offered, inadvertently, one of the strongest cases against Christian orthodoxy. In order that the happiness of the saints in heaven be made more delightful, he argued, they will be “allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned”. I would go to some trouble to avoid the company of those who take pleasure in others’ torment. I would do almost anything to eliminate the risk of eternal fellowship with those who believe such a spectacle is their reward for righteousness.
Yet after reading Dawkins’s philippic against theism,The God Delusion, I am not so sure.
A life of obeisance to a deity one disbelieves in may be a price worth paying. Dawkins’s harangues in this life are assertive enough. In the unlikely event that there is a region of the hereafter reserved for us infidels, hearing them again at full volume without end would be one more reason for penitence.
Dawkins is a formidable advocate of science and reason against pseudoscience and superstition. He has deserved sport with the scientifically illiterate. He scorns the scandalous suggestion of the Prime Minister that a school that teaches creationism is part of a healthy diversity of educational provision. He demolishes the notion that science and religion are, in the phrase of the late Stephen Jay Gould, “non-overlapping magisteria” that deal with different branches of knowledge.
Biblical literalists have integrity enough to understand that science is not merely different from religion but clashes with it. Science is critical; liberal religion accommodates criticism as best it may; dogmatic religion rejects criticism in favour of revelation. But Dawkins cannot leave it there.
The problem is not with his well-known pugnacity. Referring to the controversy about the Danish cartoons of the Prophet, Dawkins rejects the notion that religious sensibilities are uniquely entitled to respect. He thereby uncharacteristically understates. In a recent television [Channel 4] debate about Muslims and free speech, one of the Danish imams who had sparked the protests stated that he was entitled to respect. In a free society he is entitled to no such thing, but only to religious and political liberty. Whether he enjoys respect as well is up to him.
But Dawkins is himself uncomprehending of the argument for separating religious and civic authority. His message is not only that religion is false, but that it is the source of oppression. He quotes “the respected journalist Muriel Gray” — the obsequious honorific immediately alerts the reader to a tendentious proposition — about the bombings of 7/7. “The cause of all this misery, mayhem, violence, terror and ignorance is of course religion itself,” declares Gray.
Well, no. The cause of those acts of terrorism was a particular theocratic movement, Islamism. Dawkins does his best to draw analogies with other religions, giving warning of the political influence of American evangelicalism, and, at the fringes, an American Taleban intent on the repression of women and the suppression of liberty. But this is tosh.

Dawkins quotes approvingly the writer Sam Harris: “Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the US government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.”
Any significant component of the US government? We have a test case, for President Reagan did believe exactly this. “The president had fairly strong views about the parable of Armageddon,” Robert McFarlane, his National Security Adviser, later disclosed. “He believed that a nuclear exchange would be the fulfilment of that prophecy [and that] the world would end through a nuclear catastrophe.”
Reagan’s convictions may have been bizarre, but his political inferences were fundamentally different from those drawn by Osama bin Laden. Beth Fischer, the political scientist, has plausibly argued that Reagan reversed his arms policies on becoming convinced that a nuclear exchange was an imminent possibility. He implemented a rapprochement with the Soviet Union in 1984, with his saccharine “Ivan and Anya” speech, 15 months before Gorbachev became Soviet leader.
Religions, and even religious fundamentalisms, are not all alike. Liberal societies, partly because of the spread of knowledge borne of scientific inquiry, have come to an accommodation with religion — not intellectually, but socially. The founders of the United States sought the separation of Church and State. They were adamant that religion should not divide people.
But they still regarded religion as a rich civic resource. In motivating and inspiring social action it is. Reagan’ s pacific arms policies are still widely unrecognised both by his liberal critics and his conservative adulators. Martin Luther King’s witness against racial segregation is a more obvious example.

The secularist argument for having no religious test for public office is not the same as the argument for atheism. The argument for atheism is not the same as deriding religion as the source of conflict. Dawkins’s polemics are to secularism what C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Lettersis to religious apologetics: knowing, insular and sanctimonious.
They are testament to how convictions about religion can lead serious scholars to intellectual disrepute.
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Published: April 13, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Dawkins : gnus : Institute for Science and Human Values : New athiesm : R. Joseph Hoffmann : Sam Harris : secular humanism : The God Delusion ..
5 Responses to “Dawkins v God: Stop the Fight, by Oliver Kamm*”

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Quote of the Day: Oliver Kamm on Dawkins’s Polemics | Unsettled Christianity says:
 April 14, 2011 at 11:04 am
[...] via Dawkins v God: Stop the Fight, by Oliver Kamm* « The New Oxonian. [...]
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 steph 
 April 14, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Very good and incisive article. Nothing has changed and it’s still valid after five years. The argument for atheism is not the same as deriding religion as the source of conflict. Yet there is a slim group which insists that it is. The polemics of Dawkins, his slim group of followers and like minded atheists, are to secularism what C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters is to religious apologetics: knowing, insular and sanctimonious. They aren’t going to persuade people to make the world a better place and have no rational, constructive, articulated plan. They just make alot of noise for a very insignificant group.
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New Atheist Invective-Based Life Form « Choice in Dying says:
 April 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
[...] idea of ’rustication’), has even thought it worthwhile for some reason to resurrect Oliver Kamm’s review of Dawkins’ The God Delusion, first published in The Times in 2006. Hoffmann gives us no reason for republishing it now; [...]
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 Curious Presbyterian 
 April 14, 2011 at 10:12 pm
The photo is of Nicolas Sarkozy, the current President of France, not Oliver Kamm.
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 Curious Presbyterian 
 April 15, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Glad to see you’ve now changed it. You’re welcome!
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Terry Jones: Another View
by rjosephhoffmann

Cyrus Tahir is a graduate of the distinguished Lahore University of Management Studies in Lahore, Pakistan, and of the University of Warwick, U.K.  He now lives in London.
The oppression brings a reaction: Indiscriminate bombing of people who’ve never had the chance to equip themselves with the academic tools of the modern-world and to understand the intricacies of political, social and economic games that are played in the realm of world politics.
They live and have always lived by a system of tribal allegiances which has supplied them justice, social harmony, support and a life that they have enjoyed for centuries. When the need occurred, the world in general, and the US in particular, conveniently decided to support the war-lords and tribes, facilitating the importation of warriors from different parts of the globe into Afghanistan. Whilst these were men and children from a wide spectrum of Islamic schools of thought, one particular brand was keenly supported owing to their views about waging holy war and the concept of Jihad.

The pragmatic-realist US government discerned the need of the hour: as an expedient, it allowed the training of millions of individuals for warfare against the communist threat. The scale of the training can be imagined by the fact that a late Pakistani army officer, who worked in close proximity with the CIA, Sen. Charlie Wilson and was even trained in the US, single-handedly trained 95,000 people for waging America’s own holy war.
What wasn’t done was to equip these ‘units’ as he called them, with education, and the  knowledge and skill to live their lives and earn their livings once the war was over.
Thanks to the training given to them, these people of local Afghan origin, Pakistanis, Africans, Arabs and others from the Balkans knew how to make incendiary bombs from items of daily usage but did not know the Pythagorean theorem or history, beyond their own, or literature–a gap in education that haunts all and sundry across the globe today.
The Taliban (literally  ‘the students’) were merely a part of these warring forces who supported the US cause and were left to their own devices once the Soviets retreated. With ample ammunition, a culture of tribalism and war, plenty of stinger missiles to play with and no sign of any of the GOD’s enemy (the US had first invoked term to describe the USSR), what any warring nation or people would do is no hard task to imagine.
Someone tells a person that the entire system you have believed in all your life is going to be taken away from you and you are the only one who can save it.  Without fail, the instinct to be a saviour arises – such is the fragility of  human-kind. Not to forget the often quoted phrase, ‘Give a man a bullet & he’ll want a gun. Give the man a gun and he’ll be giving away bullets.’

Soviet troop withdrawal
The Terry Jones Affair
There is ample room for pointing fingers and blaming the Revd. Terry Jones or the Afghan mullahs for the cold-hearted murder of UN workers and the desecration of the Holy Quran. What needs to be looked at is the underlying reasons for the occurrence of these events.
The oppression and wave of terror faced by even the most peaceful of citizens in the Northern tribal belt of Pakistan and bordering areas of Afghanistan is the worst imaginable. Un-manned drone attacks, indiscriminate carpet bombing and the total lack of value for life by the US forces has become the daily norm. Whilst the pastor was operating fully within his constitutional guarantee of free speech and did not violate American law by burning the Holy Quran, what the security forces and their operatives have been doing in South Asia is not acceptable under any law, local or foreign.

What does one expect of a population that has been marred by war, grossly mistrusts the US, has always been a proud nation that detests invaders and wants to live by their own laws which are a mixture of tribal custom and laws emanating from religion.
In the same way that any liberal would defend Mr. Jones’s right to burn the Quran under the provisions of the American Constitution, an Afghan could perhaps demand his death under the laws which he is governed by. A simple case of quid pro quo. The issue with the US government, from the standpoint of the Islamic states, has not been its democratic values but its hypocrisy. Dictated by political expediency, the same Islamic law, which might find Mr. Terry Jones guilty and subject to the death penalty, was invoked in getting Mr. Raymond Davis free after he murdered two young men in broad-daylight.
Raymond Davis, freed by ransom
There are two things that deserve comment, in my capacity as a Pakistani citizen viewing these events and knowing something about the historical context where they unfolded.  I cannot and will not be party to any causes which condone the murder of any individual, be it a UN worker, a soldier or a civilian caught in the midst of a fight.
However, we must accept the fact that whereas the US constitution lays down rights and liberties for everyone, so does every constitution in the world in relation to its own people. I am not an expert in constitutional law but I think that the claim to have a right to burn a book revered and held as a Holy book must be weighed in the balance against the existence of a law that bars anyone from committing acts against another citizen’s set of beliefs and values. That said, Mr. Jones is allowed under the US constitution to desecrate the Quran, yet the effects of this act materialize in a country whose constitutional law forbids desecration of the Quran and in certain case specifies the death penalty.
If put into context, these laws propose a “will of the people and citizens” put into writing and effect by elected members of the government and accepted as laws that the citizens of the country regard as correct. This does not necessarily mean that there is no recourse if the laws are mis-used or abused for the good of one or with mala-fide intention.
Essentially, while the American law may not require respect for any religion, I think it does not necessarily indicate that the actions of any individual towards religion must be disregarded. Thus Mullah Kashaf’s demands–though they may be out of context in the US society and law–seem to hint at the outburst of reaction that may occur across the globe.

The US government is not seen as a saviour by all even in Afghanistan and the perception that the Afghans want the same values and lifestyle as the citizens of the US is perhaps the incorrect of generalizations.
It is extremely wrong to believe that the United States has sent its soldiers in Afghanistan to provide the Afghan people with a better future, for a multiplicity of reasons. Primarily, there was never a call from Afghanistan itself or the people to invite the US forces into Afghanistan. It had a great deal to do with the US’s obsession of Osama Bin Laden and not much to do with the more recently developed rationale of granting liberties to the Afghan people.
The incidents that have come out through the news and other sources tell a different story than that of providing liberty and peace to the Afghan populace.  Now Terry Jones is part of this larger story.
What must also be noted is the fact that during the early 90’s when Mullah Omar and his regime reigned in parts of Afghanistan, the women felt so safe that they did not bother covering themselves in the presence of unknown males, if these males belonged to the Taliban. There are hard-liners and moderates in every stream of life. Cases of domestic violence are aplenty in the US, the UK and the Arab world. Women are not allowed to drive cars or leave homes without their male relatives in many parts of the world, yet the US continues to support the regimes; for obvious vested interests. Therefore, the logic of helping build a better Afghanistan does not hold much weight. Perhaps, the US forces would be better off with their young men and women confined to the boundaries of the US whilst the religious zealots of Afghanistan fight amongst themselves from the remains of what the US left behind.

Explain: Why?
I could not agree more with the principle that there is no moral equivalency of the Mr. Jones’ actions and the actions committed in Afghanistan. But once we take into context the fact that hundreds of Afghan citizens are indiscriminately killed in the search for a group of men, these are citizens who have never had the chance to actually receive education and were left in the lurch with guns, weapons and training, training in how to build bombs once the USA’s purpose of defeating the USSR was achieved.
What they are left with is hatred for a country and anything to do with it and the idea of violent opposition to anything that comes their way with violence.  The murder of the UN workers may seem only a small part of their daily life.
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Published: April 14, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Afghanistan : Bigotry : First Amendment : free speech : hate speech : Pakistan : Qur'an : Quran burning : religious extremism : Terry Jones ..
2 Responses to “Terry Jones: Another View”

.
 steph 
 April 15, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Thank you Cyrus for a very important article. Thank you for hightlighting significant things such as lack of education and deceptive motives and corruption of other nations. However… although ‘liberal’ is a sticky sort of label, politically I’m a fairly left wing greeny humanist, and I don’t think Jones had a ‘right’ to burn the Quran. He’d find he’d breached the limits of free expression in other Western countries. I am an advocate for social responsibility and consideration for human lives. But that is no reflection on your article which I am very grateful to you for.
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 steph 
 April 18, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Coincidentally I just heard on BBC radio 4 6pm news that a man was today sentenced to 70 days prison for burning the Quran in the centre of Carlisle. The judge said in sentencing, ‘he used theatrical bigotry to cause distress’.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-13119241
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Did Religion Give Us Doubt?
by rjosephhoffmann

Erasmus
Professor Jerry Coyne asks this question while pretending to ignore me, and I assume he means it can be answered, and that the answer is a loud and obvious No: that religion, as the source of the world’s ugliness and ills, cannot possibly have given us doubt. Religion gives us faith–the opposite of reason–as everybody knows.
The previous post on martyrdom may raise Mr Coyne’s question indirectly.  A number of people, mainly the cheering squad for Team Gnu,  suggested that I was wrong and that atheists have too been murdered as atheists. That may or may not be true; the evidence (which is more on the order of information) looks highly problematical to me and the source cited–the New Encyclopaedia of Unbelief is far from a disinterested or trusted resource for finding out.   When the Team finally settles whether they don’t need martyrs or do but want to call them something else I’m sure they will be in touch.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter since martyrdom and murder are not the same thing.  To analogize: martyrdom is to murder as baptism is to bath.  The key difference is that martyrdom can only happen when a church (medieval Rome and Calvin’s Geneva or the whole of Byzantion or the Islamic Middle East will do) or a state where edicts of the church have the force of law (no good modern Western examples)  can be judicially enforced.  Martyrdom is not murder; in context, pathetic though the context may be, it is the execution of justice.  Thomas More is a martyr because he was sentenced to death by Parliament, not because he was murdered in his sleep for holding treasonous opinions.  (He wasn’t.) If Gnus really care about the meaning of words and not just using them for stones, they might begin with this distinction.

Holbach
But the cases that were cited, ranging from the posthumously burned John Wycliffe and the “heretics” William Tyndale, Miguel Servetus, and Giordano Bruno–none of them atheists and all of them judicially executed when the term martyrdom could be applied by one side or another in a struggle against an oppressive Church, or specific repressive doctrines–does tell us something about “doubt.” It tells us that they were put to death for doubting, for skepticism ab0ut the doctrines of their religion.  So yes, clearly: religion gives us doubt.  It’s certainly given us scores of doubters.
And they aren’t the first.  The first time Christianity comes into contact with the term “atheist” is when the Christians themselves were derided as atheists.  Justin  Martyr and Tertullian both write “apologies” in the second and early third century defending themselves against the term. “Hence,  we (Christians)  are called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as the gods are concerned.” (Justin, First Apol., ca. 167).

Tertullian: The First Angry Christian, or Just Another Atheist?
Plainly, the accusation comes from their doubts about the existence of the Roman pantheon.  So when Richard Dawkins confidently proclaims that we are all “atheists” with respect to the majority of gods who have ever existed, it begins here–with Jews and Christians.  It begins with doubts about the tales and myths propagated by their Roman hosts. –And just for the record, neither Tertullian nor Justin fits the description of local yokels that Celsus and Porphyry tried to pin on the Christians.
We can quibble (and should) over what the term atheist might have meant that long ago.  A fairly substantial body of scholars feels that atheism in the sense of rejecting the existence of God doesn’t achieve its modern proportions prior to the encyclopaedist Holbach’s rejection of the idea of gods  in the eighteenth century.  But that conclusion, along with stratifications like “positive,” “negative,” weak and strong (old and gnu?) atheisms are just intellectual squares in a bigger picture.
If you put the picture together from its fractious bits, it looks like doubt has a significant amount to do with its coherence.  To get from a lawyer-apologist like Tertullian to an atheist-materialist like Holbach is a long trip, and it is peppered (just like I said) by the death-scenes of dozens of martyrs (yup, that word again) who coaxed doubt and skepticism along–people who were called godless by others but would never have used the term about themselves.
Does it seem improbable to the “New” Atheists that a full-frontal atheist like Holbach, so explicit in his denunciation of religion that his view even frightened Voltaire, wouldn’t have known the long history of heresies about the trinity, the nature of God, creation, biblical inspiration, and particular revelation? Or will this continue to be a blindspot in the essentially ahistorical view that they’re professing–one that, frankly cheapens the history of ideas and thus their own, big,  negative idea about God?  It would be pretty rare, I think, to discover a view that is free of historical development, predecessors, and mediators.  Do they really intend to continue spinning historical fantasies that are not only wrong but embarrassing.

Strawman: The other guy s martyr
One of Professor Dawkins’s favorite talking points about faith-heads is that religion is their “default position.”   Weak in science, they can explain everything including the origins of the cosmos and life on the planet through the legerdemain of beliefs that take the place of hard science.  I couldn’t agree more with the diagnosis.
But surely a big part of the ignorance afflicting faithheads is that they do not study history: They make it up, or they rely on a few convenient truths that they find useful in protecting their faith.  One such view is that history is negotiable and about things that happened a long time ago, so there is no real right or wrong–just viewpoints.  They see the time of Jesus and the modern world as overlapping periods punctuated but not punctured by science and  critical history.  I personally find this tendency the most distressing, head-banging feature of the fundamentalist mindset.

And what does New Atheism do with the fantasies of faith-heads?  They create an alternate fantasy in which the history of religion becomes a caricature of intellectual and ethical developments: a static church with undifferentiated teaching about a God who is entombed in a book that has never been interpreted, challenged, attacked–or doubted.  It’s pure drivel.  Why do they do this?  because it’s convenient; because it has become their default position.
It would be a huge tragedy if the wishful thinking of some atheists became a template for understanding where doubt comes from.  It doesn’t come like Meals on Wheels  from Sextus Empiricus and covens of atheists who managed to survive the onslaught of “religion” and the “Dark Ages” in caves above Heidelberg. It comes like everything else from the cultures that we have shaped.  In none of these cultures has anything like the 4% (or whatever minuscule number) of hardcore atheists been influential in moving doubt and irreligion forward against the thundering tide of dominant religious orthodoxies. That role, as I’ve already said, has been taken by men and women of terrific stamina, courage and imagination.  And doubt.
Doubt has everything to do with religion,  Professor Coyne.
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Published: April 20, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Bible : Discovery Institute : doubt : gnus : Holbach : humanism : Jerry Coyne : new atheism : PZ Myers : religion : Richard Dawkins : secularism : Skepticism : Why Evolution is True ..
21 Responses to “Did Religion Give Us Doubt?”

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 steph 
 April 20, 2011 at 7:27 pm
Very good article, just a shame it had to be written I suppose. It’s true from beginning to end and for Christians I know, faith without doubt isn’t faith at all. In fact even critical historical scholarship itself isn’t entirely honest if it doesn’t allow refutation and concede a degree of doubt with the belief that one has done the best one could. Suspicion of all belief, as Lord Polonius says: Doubt thou the stars are fire, ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.’
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 20, 2011 at 7:32 pm
Sad, that no one amongst the Gnus seems to have read Ebeling, or Whitehead, or Ernst Bloch.
Reply

 steph 
 April 20, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Sad yes, and that matters. Relevant scholarship matters.

 
 ken 
 April 21, 2011 at 11:07 am
Or William James, Walt Whitman, or Jiddu Krishnamurti

 
 
 
The Twittenator Will Dominate Twitter in 2010-11 | Wii Word Gossip says:
 April 20, 2011 at 8:53 pm
[...] Did Religion Give Us Doubt? « The New Oxonian [...]
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 Jeremy Stangroom 
 April 20, 2011 at 10:54 pm
How does Epicurus fit into this picture? Okay, technically he was some sort of polydeist, but his stand against the Greek pantheon of gods was pretty impressive really (albeit apart from the odd swerve he was largely recycling Democritus).
Also, the whole shift in early Judaism from polytheism to monotheism has to be in here somewhere, I reckon. Not that I know anything about it!
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 21, 2011 at 7:36 am
Yeah, Epicurus became an insult term for Jews and Christians, then a name Christian called their heretics. Ataraxia seems to have taught that the gods did not dole out pain or reward, and were basically useless,making the ppy highly unsuitable for Christians.
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 Ed Jones 
 April 21, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Whtever you have in mind that the Gnus have not read of Ebeling, I do know his thinking on the apostolic witness to the jesus of history. His thoughts are the thoughts of Hans Dieter Betz -this I can guarantee. For both the apostolic witness is the Sermon on the Mount. Betz writes: “This source presents us with an early form – deriving from the (Jesus Movement) – of the (Jesus trdition) as a whole, which had direct inks to the teaching of the historical Jesus and thus constituted an alternative to Gentile Christianity as known above all from the letters of Paul and the Gospels. as well as later writings of the New Testament. An image of Jesus is revealed which is entirely different from that of the synoptic tradition and its Gentile Christian redactors.(Essays on the Sermon on the Mount).” Here we have the answer to the Jesus puzzle, beyond the doubt associated with traditional Christianity.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 22, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Ebeling wasn’t the first, but maybe the most ardent spokesman for doubt being essential for any “decision” made with regard to faith. He sees it as a Pauline wager.

 
 
 
 JoshOnPC 
 April 21, 2011 at 10:07 pm
No. Religion did not give us doubt, simply more cause for it.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 22, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Cows create the need for milk?
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 Ed Jones 
 April 22, 2011 at 11:21 am
A basis for the above claim that Ebeling’s thought agrees with the thought of Betz: “- – the author is indebeted to a large number of colleagues– – too many to be named here. Some however, must be mentioned by name. Gerhard Ebeling, to whom the volume is dedicated, has been a friend and wise counselor during the years when the essays were worked out”. See Ebeling”s: The Word of God and Tradition.
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 Ed Jones 
 April 22, 2011 at 11:24 am
Kindly explan: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
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Strawman « Choice in Dying says:
 April 23, 2011 at 12:14 pm
[...] Thus far, R. Joseph Hoffmann, over at the New Oxonian, stuffed to the brim with straw. He ends up with the remark: Doubt has everything to do with religion,  Professor Coyne. [...]
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 23, 2011 at 1:06 pm
I do keep the straw in my basement. Technically, I can’t be the straw man.
Reply

 steph 
 April 23, 2011 at 6:31 pm
I read MacDonald’s post. It’s clear he’s ignored or hasn’t read the relevant scholarship and hasn’t considered the content of this post at all. It’s interesting that he describes his former ‘conservative’ Christian experience, obviously formative for his current convictions. I get the impression that many new atheists have come from a fundamentalist belief, which held evidence, argument and critical scholarship in contempt. Then they convert to disbelief and continue to hold evidence, argument and critical scholarship in contempt, from an opposite perspective – effectively ‘batting’ for the other side. MacDonald is not just unaware of relevant scholarship – he is unaware obviously of the variety of beliefs and doubts of ordinary Christian believers. The commenters are – unhelpful – indescribable really.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 23, 2011 at 6:38 pm
There isn’t enough I can say abut this particular player.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 23, 2011 at 7:06 pm
http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/of-implicit-atheism-an-easter-meditation/

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 24, 2011 at 6:38 pm
@Steph Macdonald is the poster boy for angry village atheist. Having a bad religious experience is no more excuse for being obnoxious than getting faith is an excuse for religious zealotry. -And no, he doesn’t read’ he’s too busy phlegming.

 
 
 
 steph 
 April 24, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Such a poor model, lacking in substance. Like an empty pudding bowl waiting for a pudding.
Reply
 
Did Religion Give Us Doubt? » R. Joseph Hoffmann says:
 October 15, 2011 at 9:40 pm
[...] Did Religion Give Us Doubt? [...]
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Of Implicit Atheism – An Easter Meditation
by rjosephhoffmann

It is time to worry about the sorry state of discourse  between believers, non-believers, and (my favourite category) “others.”
I’m especially worried about the war between implicit atheists–those who identify as unbelievers or agnostics, but draw no particular satisfaction from doing so–and explicit or new atheists who like their A’s red, their heroes scarlet,  and their language blue.

It is almost unimaginable to me that respected scholars need to taunt religious women and men with words like “faithhead” while others drive spikes through religious symbols and Korans–then  defend their actions as examples of the sacred rights and guarantees that keep us free and independent of religious tyranny.  WWJD?  Q: What would Jefferson do? A: It doesn’t matter.  But it is even more startling that explicit atheists see implicit atheists as religion-coddlers, sissies in the fight, traitors to the cause.  It really makes me want to throw my extra creamy rice pudding at them.
Yet criticize this mode in kind, with a little sarcasm tossed in, and (I promise) you will be called a faithhead too. Or a goddist. Or a troll.  Or a fabricant des hommes de paille, or a stirrer of pots,  or a closet priest.
You’ll be told your logic/principles/syntax/ethics/ suck. Probably your brainpower too.  You’ll be told that atheists aren’t interested in being kind, “accommodating,”  or engaging. (Not after all they have suffered, all the kidnapings, unsolved murders and broken down doors.) They are interested in being right.  The closest analogy, I’ve come to conclude, isn’t the academic seminar where most of the current language would probably get you sent to the Dean for a lecture on civility.  It’s the language of political partisanship.  It’s true home is the Town Hall Meeting of Teaparty activists. (Alcibiades to Socrates: Your dialectic’s no good here, cowboy.)
Where have we all gone wrong?  What is the new factor in our discourse that causes us to  ”abjectify” our opponents before we come to terms with their arguments?  –Which of course, with an abject opponent, you don’t need to do. Is it merely that we’re all too busy to dignify stupidity when we can roll right over it and not worry too much about casualties.

The standard explanation for our invective approach to discussion (please notice I number myself among the sinners)  is that we are encountering an international discourse crisis brought on by the trigger-happy nature of internet communications: we click before we think, not considering that at the other end of the connection is another human being (also sitting in front of a screen) rather than a lead wall.  What Christian girl named Perpetua, finding herself alone in these rhetorical woods at night, would not run, clutching her Bible, to the nearest church?
Not unbelievers, though.  These woods are ours, and we can burn ‘em down if we want to. –Plus there’s that little thrill, that tiny rush that comes from having just composed a long, churlish digressive paragraph and seeing it go live when we hit “Submit.”

When we discover that quick and correct are not the same thing, it’s too late.  We’re committed to the press-select-to-play choice of our latest rhetorical spasm, and because of the public nature of the interchange we have to fight back and fight on.  The digathon, as in heels in, is on.  Your oblation to the gods of unreason has been made; now just lie back and watch them revel.
I spent a whole hour of my short life a month ago trying to persuade a Big Red A-atheist “friend” (I’d never met) that the drunken priest  arrested out west for offering his staff to the arresting officers was (a) not a Catholic (b) was more pathetic than dangerous, and (c) was therefore a bad instance of the moral troubles with the Catholic church and its ministers, about which I have scarcely remained quiet. If you believe that as all religion is putrid,   details of its putrice are irrelevant and interchangeable puzzle pieces, then I suppose one detail is as good as another.  After all, we’re not doing science here are we?
The responses came from a large crowd of her commiserators who, in no particular order, called me a prick, a molester, an idiot, and “Just shut the hell up because this is what religion does to our children.” After suggesting that the arresting officers were probably over eighteen  I decided not to stay for drinks and courageously hit the Unfriend button. Scene: the gods of Unreason quaff and toast each other, laughing.


The same applies when we’re “right“:  It’s not enough that Hector is dead. He has to be dragged three times lifeless around the periphery of Troy, electronically speaking, to impress the watchers.  The internet has given us a new shame culture, and with that comes new mechanisms of insult and humiliation. You can’t be too dead when you lose a point: you have to be dead and ashamed, too.  (Comment being formulated by as yet unrevealed reader: “Right, Hoffmann: You should know.  You’re just making straw men again….“)  Note to self:  bring three more straw men up from basement to send to “friends.” Order new straw.
Given the nature of the back-and forth, what you will almost never see in a comments section is someone saying, “I never thought of that.  You have a point.”
It’s true that isolation plays a role in this nastiness: the computer screen is a real screen between us and others.  It keeps us in contact as a social network (the name says it all) of virtual strangers, and friends of strangers.  It is not a community because communities produce human relationships, forms of decorum, harmony (or at least courtesy) and the potential for fulfillment and happiness.  –But not social media. There’s  no need to risk real humanity or feelings in the bargain.  We can screen information and opinions and hasty judgments and challenges in and out.  It’s the community of Id. We can be vicious and count on no one to check the story against the facts–or more commonly, the fallacies alleged against the argument proposed. Best of all, we can count on viciousness back from others.  It’s just like a bad marriage, isn’t it?

We are the gods of applications: we can be seen and unseen. Friend and unfriend at a whim.We can climb into the ring of an unmoderated slug fest or play on sites run by an austere figure named Moderator, as in WTF Moderator.  We can keep controversies alive for days beyond their shelf life by sending Just One More Comment.
When you’re isolated from real conversation and discussion the Q. is: who knows what the last word is? (A: It’s when I stop hitting submit.)  We can invade, evade, withdraw, disappear.  But we cannot do the one thing that real intellectual encounters often require us to do: change our minds.
In the discussion that most concerns me right now, the quarrel between unbelievers of an explicit and implicit variety, the debate also seems to be about men and women who see science as the basic cipher for human satisfaction–including moral good–and those who have a wider humanistic outlook that also, often includes a certain respect for religion, or at least an awareness of its social and cultural significance.
The “soft atheists” are men and women who aren’t afraid to accept the notion that they are unbelievers, but they make this choice on humanistic, existential or historical grounds–not because they feel the conclusion is forced on them by science.
At the risk of rousing the guard, I think thousands of intellectuals, scholars, artists, scientists, and ordinary folk fall into this category. The “atheism” they assume but do not profess or press can only strike the full-frontal atheist as quaint and hypocritical. When I say this, the default reaction toward the critic is to impute a deadly sin: Critics are always merely jealous of commercial success.  That explains everything. The logic: whatever sells is right.
My favourite “example” of the implicit atheist made no secret of her atheism.  Whenh Susan Sontag was told she was dying of cancer, that it was inoperable, and that what was left to her was “faith,” she said  that she believed in nothing but this life, that there was no continuation, and that in any event she took religion far too seriously to think she could embrace it at the last minute to get a sense of relief.
Implicit atheists are not intellectually soft, but the conclusion that God does not exist does not seem pivotal, life-changing to them because they neither read it in a newspaper as data nor in a book called Wake Up You Slumbering Fools: There IS NO God. Most of them have come to a position of unbelief through a culture in which religion inhabits ideas, spaces, patterns of thought, modes of conduct, art and music.  Who can say that this is right or wrong: it’s the world we’ve got.
I suspect that implicit atheists are especially repugnant to New Atheists because they are seen to have arrived at atheism using discount methods. They lack toughness.  Apparently (as a commentator opined) I don’t have cojones.  Damn.
Their (our) “decision” looks like indecision.  Maybe they should have to wear a red Question Mark for three years until they realize that it’s science that confirms your unbelief–sort of like the Holy Spirit confirms your being a believer in Christianity. Earn your A.
But it does seem to me, beyond this, that the implicit atheist does not entirely reject religion.  How do you reject whole chapters of the human story? Your distant grandmother probably said the rosary, or wore a wig, or a veil.  Your grandfather fifty generations ago might have slaughtered Jews en route to Jerusalem or Muslims after he got there. So many possibilities.  You can’t tear their superstitions out of your family album, can you– an impossibility made less critical by the fact that you have no idea what they did.  History has transformed them into innocuous unknowns in the same way that it has rendered the most noxious forms of religion impotent.  The Old Testament God that most new atheists like to rant on about is a God that implicit atheists gave up on years ago. No cojones.
This comes to them inductively, though a process of intellectual growth and assimilation.  What they call religion has historical context and historical importance.  But the key word is “context,” because the humanistic unbeliever lives in a context where religion is no longer the magisterial authority for how we understand the physical world or how we lead our lives within it.
Many such implicit atheists will feel some degree of sadness about this, not because they feel religion doesn’t deserve our skepticism, occasional contempt, and criticism, but because they know from poetry, art, music, and philosophy that the project to create a secular humanity from the ashes of our religious predecessors is a tough project and that the nasal chorus, “God does Not exist” (option one: “Religion is Evil.”)  is really a wheel-spinner when it comes to getting things done.
The anger of many hardcore (explicit?) atheists comes down to this: their belief that an atheism which is not forced by science is inauthentic. Why? because a humanistic, existential and historical unbelief does not acknowledge the apriorism of scientific atheism.  It–implicit atheism–sees science as a mode of knowing, not the only mode.  Soft-core atheism (I number myself as a proud member of this club) does not blame the Bible for being a very old book, or religion for its historical overreaching.  It forgives the Bible for being a book of its time and place and asks that we regard it merely as a souvenir of our human struggle for answers.  Anything more–like ethical rectitude or scientific plausibility–is too much.  That goes for the Qur’an, too.
There is no reason to villify God and religion, historically understood, for excesses that, as humanists, we slowly recognized as human excesses and finally learned to combat.
If we accept the principle that we made God in our image, as well as his holy and diverse books, then surely the burden is on us to clean up our mess–not to reify it merely by asserting its non-existence.
Everything from Eden to the Flood, to Sodom to the Holocaust to 9/11 was us.  Not mystical religious others: Us. Science does not explain this and does not solve it for us.  When the New Atheists are willing to accept real human responsibility for the abominations they attribute to a mythical beast called religion they will have taken a giant leap forward.
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Published: April 23, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Bible : Easter : gnus : living without religion : new atheism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : Skepticism ..
57 Responses to “Of Implicit Atheism – An Easter Meditation”

.
 s. wallerstein 
 April 23, 2011 at 7:33 pm
A good post.
I would note, however, that the New Atheists are engaged in partisan politics, anti-religious politics and so cannot be held to the standards of academic discourse.
They are trying to movilize the masses, not to convince armchair atheists, wimps, like myself.
Dawkins and Hitchens write best-sellers and that is their intention: to reach as many people as possible. I tried reading Hitchens’ book, God is not Great and found it empty, shallow although witty, but I’m not their target audience: I often am the target of their wrath.
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 steph 
 April 23, 2011 at 8:18 pm
This is so true from beginning to end. I think humanity would be saved from alot of unnecessary suffering if all of the vile viruses destroyed the vile and inhuman internet. Anyone should be forgiven for thinking atheists have no morals, if they think some of the atheist internet comments are representative of all atheists. Why is it that so many atheist internet comments assume all believers are fundamentalist and isolate various biblical problems as if believers believe every literal word? (Probably a rhetorical question.) Instead they want to demonise those who do appreciate differences and who want to continue civilised conversation and debate and make progress towards a secular humanist world … where personal belief is non intrusive, and … personal.
I am impressed with Susan Sontag – she expressed the fundamental point so incisively: ‘that she believed in nothing but this life, that there was no continuation, and that in any event she took religion far too seriously to think she could embrace it at the last minute to get a sense of relief’. I didn’t know she said that. That’s truly wonderful. I couldn’t live without the literature, music and art that inspires my life.
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 s. wallerstein 
 April 23, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Professor Hoffmann:
Actually, I just read your post over again, and it’s not good, it’s excellent.
Have a good Easter. (I’m Jewish, but haven’t been to a synagogue for about 50 years.)
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 Geoff Arnold 
 April 23, 2011 at 9:51 pm
I have a radical suggestion. It applies to both sides, but since it was provoked by what you just wrote, I’ll post it here.
Please stop generalizing and categorizing.
If you disagree with something that Dennett, or MacDonald, or Coyne says, engage the person about the point. Name them, quote their argument. Don’t generalize. And don’t tell the person what they believe: ask them. Vague generalization coupled with inaccurate attribution (usually accompanied with a dash of projection) will always lead to accusations of “strawman”, and will shift the debate from the actually subject to the meta-subject of acting in good faith, motivation, and so forth.
Compare this piece of yours with the MacDonald posting from which you borrowed the strawman image. MacDonald links to your piece, he quotes your arguments and responds to them. I don’t care whether he is accurate or not; he’s engaging with your argument.
How do you respond? You do not identify the individuals, or their posts, or even their arguments. Instead you seem to be addressing yourself to an assumed audience. Consider this passage:

Yet criticize this mode in kind, with a little sarcasm tossed in, and (I promise) you will be called a faithhead too. Or a goddist. Or a troll. Or a fabricant des hommes de paille, or a stirrer of pots, or a closet priest.
You’ll be told your logic/principles/syntax/ethics/ suck. Probably your brainpower too. You’ll be told that atheists aren’t interested in being kind, “accommodating,” or engaging. (Not after all they have suffered, all the kidnapings, unsolved murders and broken down doors.) They are interested in being right. The closest analogy, I’ve come to conclude, isn’t the academic seminar where most of the current language would probably get you sent to the Dean for a lecture on civility. It’s the language of political partisanship. It’s true home is the Town Hall Meeting of Teaparty activists. (Alcibiades to Socrates: Your dialectic’s no good here, cowboy.)
See what I mean? A rhetorical flourish addressed to the audience, devoid of any citation, so your readers can’t actually check whether you are accurately quoting “them” or merely demonstrating your erudition by tossing in the odd bit of French.
And the diagnosis:

The anger of many hardcore (explicit?) atheists comes down to this: their belief that an atheism which is not forced by science is inauthentic.
Really? How do you know? Provide some evidence, please, because you are the first person I’ve seen to raise the issue of “authenticity”. And might I suggest that you examine this statement and see how it might look to someone who does not actually hold this belief? Or perhaps it is your intention to come across as pompous and supercilious…
If you cannot support your assertion, perhaps you could consider actually asking people whether that is, in fact, what they feel. Radical, I know. Incompatible with lofty soliloquies to the audience. But possible more productive and less frustrating.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 23, 2011 at 9:55 pm
I do see what you mean: yours is the very style I’m talking about. You live in assertion land. Learn to read a discursive essay that makes a point and moves beyond your stable of names. Btw, if you had read carefully (!) you would see that I did link to MacDonald. And to Coyne specifically in the pst on religion and doubt. However, the point here is not to respond to them except insofar as it’s necessary–and I assume you are sharing your wisdom with them, point by point as well?
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 Todd I. Stark 
 April 23, 2011 at 11:14 pm
I strongly agree with one principle I infer here from Hoffman’s response regarding discourse. Piecewise quoting for the purpose of argument or debate does *not* provide an assurance or even terribly much greater likelihood of accurately responding to what the other person is actually trying to say!
If you don’t see their point by reading their words, you aren’t going to respond to their point just because you quote their words more accurately. It’s the meaning you’re missing not the phrasing.
The only thing that does that is listening to them with the intent of understanding, something that takes more effort than most of us are willing to do in an argument, because we pretty much tend to assume we already understand the other side, which is why we’re arguing.
I also agree with Arnold’s point about asking in preference to categorizing and generalizing. If someone says: “you are misunderstanding my point” we should take them at their word if we really care about getting it right. Assuming we have any respect for them at all. And otherwise, why bother having an argument? Except as an empty show for the gallery.

 
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 24, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Oh My word Geoff; now you accuse me of “stealing” the strawman image I posted on http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=3481&action=edit, to which the MacDonald piece is a reply, yet whoever uses it–it would be fair game. ou are out to score points by calling people you disagree with pompous and supercilious and then ask for evidence for opinions, which is the land we are living in. I do not detect much humility in any of your heroes; is there some reason you commend it to me? Or would my first guess be right?
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 Eric MacDonald 
 April 26, 2011 at 2:01 pm
No, no, I stole it from you, of course!

 
 
 
 Dan 
 April 24, 2011 at 12:27 am
I do at times wonder how the debate between “explicit” and “implicit” atheists would run if it wasn’t done in cyberspace. After all, rational self-restraint isn’t commonplace on the internet BECAUSE the other’s presence is immaterial — like a shade, or a spectre; the threat that you might actually get goosed for being a prick is trivially slim.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 24, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Or remarkably easy and uncostly
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 s. wallerstein 
 April 24, 2011 at 7:07 pm
I agree that the debate and animosity is almost entirely due to internet. Internet is Plato’s ring of Gyges.
I suspect that if I were to run into Coyne or Benson
 somewhere, without either of us knowing what kind of atheist the other is, we’d have a fine conversation about movies or novels, avoiding touchy subjects as well-educated people generally do when they meet face to face.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 24, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Exactly: When Patton said that fortified positions are a tribute to the stupidity of mankind he could have been talking about the WWW.
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 Todd I. Stark 
 April 24, 2011 at 7:39 pm
I pretty much share the impression that anonymity and other characteristics of social media contribute to polarization, but I don’t think it begins there. Some more general factors to consider which may also be exacerbated by the nature of web (and which both sides of a given conversation are liable to be influenced by even the smart one):
1. When we think about something there is often a tendency to feel increasingly strongly in the direction of our initial impression, due to an effect known as “evaluative consistency of cognitive responses.” We tend to generate thoughts consistent with our existing attitudes and to alter existing thoughts to make them more consistent with each other.
2. We are social creatures, motivated to look smart and clever and avoid being caught in mistakes more than any objective motivation to get the whole story.
3. The more we are in contact with people who share the same attitudes, the more we tend to reinforce each other’s’ existing way of thinking by providing additional reasons.
4. Many people value being viewed as slightly more extreme than others around them in order to distinguish themselves. When they realize that they are seen as moderate, they often shift their view to become more extreme.
I didn’t make these up, they are social psych 101 and each has some degree of empirical data behind it.
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 steph 
 April 24, 2011 at 7:57 pm
It IS an excellent post. It seems to improve when read again and again, perhaps as the truth sinks in. “Implicit atheist”: I like that alot. I’ve never thought of it like that and it’s absolutely true. I never wanted to spend my life running other people down and I don’t want to be constantly confronted by those who do. I look forward to the day when the aggressive explicit sort can be ignored. Most real people of the world aren’t even aware of the internet feuds – I’d like to avoid them too. Other non believers I know, academic or not, seem oblivious to them and never come across such things in their daily experiences. I have the impression this level of aggression is purely contained within the internet, where it’s easier, as you suggest, to hit ‘submit’ and send off vile hatred to some faceless foe… and therefore I have a suspicion that in reality the explicits on internet are more implicit atheists in the real world. I hope so.
I would avoid it all, if I didn’t take religion so seriously, particularly historically, and wasn’t so immensely grateful to the arts and philosophies religion has inspired. “There is no reason to villify God and religion, historically understood, for excesses that, as humanists, we slowly recognized as human excesses and finally learned to combat.” So easy to understand, so perfectly expressed. Why can’t we all appreciate that? I am an advocate for scholarship in public debate but increasingly I am being exposed to the sheer repulsion of civilised discussion by the explicit atheist sort, whose convictions are so vehemently held, that self doubt is erradicated and debate is rendered useless. But only on the internet…
Degrees of faith, hope, trust, doubt and suspicion, are intrinsic to human nature, I think, whether we believe in the supernatural, or never have and never will.
I don’t eat pudding but I now know what I’d like to do with it if I had it. But would it just be at the computer screen I’d throw it? I’d really like to throw a brick at that. I don’t meet the pudding targets in the street, I hope I never will.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 24, 2011 at 8:05 pm
Only one thing wrong with us implicit atheists (apart from our overweening pride and pomposity, I mean); we don’t feel strongly enough about the non-existence of God to fight for the conclusion. Consequently, pretty easy to overlook us. [sniff]
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 steph 
 April 24, 2011 at 10:35 pm
You just implicitly described a paradise which allows peaceful space, away from the overlooking crowds, in which we can enjoy our gins quietly in our pompous pride, and let time cure our sniffs. It’s Anzac Day today – white poppies (opiates?) for peace. I don’t care to fight, and never did. Passion is for creation not destruction of things.

 
 
 
 Shawn 
 April 24, 2011 at 9:07 pm
I appreciate this intellectual reflection as someone who has fairly recently gone from self-identified Christian to self-identified Atheist. I became an Atheist really because I started reading again (I got turned off to reading by school) but became interested again by a Stephen King novel, which lead to reading many other works of fiction, some that I had already read for school but paid little attention to. I now love reading for many reasons. But back then all of these ideas and stories (some very far-out; Philip K. Dick) just made the very specific idea of God seem implausible. I didn’t pick up an Atheism book or start looking for resources online until I started having more conflicts with my parents, sister and some of my former Christian friends and felt I needed to educate myself specifically about religion and atheism to defend my feeling. I picked up Dan Barker’s Godless when I was without any real belief in religion. I still haven’t finished it actually, because I don’t find it particularly interesting and almost like I am just reopening an old wound (which also gets reopened whenever a holiday event comes up and my parents want to pray over dinner and what not).
I think the anger you see is largely a response to the indoctrination that many of us faced as children and young adults (I hid in the bathroom instead of going to Sunday school many times) and culminating in feeling scammed when we became young adults and started to come into our own philosophies – I am 24. My girlfriend (also 24), who was a more fervent (wanted to be a missionary – now admits to wanting to just wanting help people and see the world) Christian and is now a much more chilled out Atheist than I am, not that I am a totally bitter Atheist and I never resort to name calling.
I’ve tried to have intellectual responses appealing to reason even on youtube videos (although it is admittedly difficult and I’ve spent less time on such things).
Why do I bother at all? Because I want to encourage skepticism, I want to help some kid like me not feel crazy or evil or sinful for doubting (or for having sex for that matter). I guess no one really helped me, except many authors like Stephen King who are very much chill Atheists or Agnostics and at the very least just question religion and show the harm in fundamentalism. But I didn’t have a deconversion or a conversion to Atheism, it was more of a self-realization brought on by general skepticism. I have always been a skeptic and now I’d almost identify more as a cynic.
But I also want to spread the good news of Atheism (words chosen snarkily) Just like I tell any young relatives or friends I have looking at college that it is OK and much less expensive to go to a community college and it can give them time to figure out what they want to do. Or how I tell people with foot problems (like me) about Polysorb inserts (not a plug, really).
But I find myself trying less as I focus on things that are important to my life that have nothing to do with religion. Although I do enjoy waxing philosophic, maybe most hardcore Atheists just want to be philosophers and are angry at their current jobs and the influencers that got them there. After all it was protestant parents and the protestant work ethic that said I should get a good job as an engineer to move up in society not get a “useless” English degree or something.
But not unlike Dan Barker, after converting so many people for so long, I almost feel I have a duty to undo all the stuff I did. Although I admittedly didn’t convert anyone that I can remember, I still influenced people, especially in the realm of religious shaming.
 I think many raised without religious shame and structure take for granted what it would be like to have parents and extended family that are still that way. I mean when someone says happy resurrection day to you, especially when they know you are an atheist already, it’s like they don’t respect you as an individual – which may also be the cause for so much anger, name calling and resentment. You can pick your friends but to isolate yourself from your family is difficult. But then the Atheist out of the closet experience is not unlike that which homosexuals go through with their conservative families. It’s like the “I love you, even though you’re an Atheist” vs “I love you and accept that it is okay to be an Atheist”. Replace Atheist with Gay, it’s the exact same thing.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 24, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Thanks Shawn for this very thoughtful and introspective piece. It’s extremely informative and helpful.
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 Geoff Arnold 
 April 24, 2011 at 11:37 pm
In haste (yes, I know, a terrible problem), let me make a couple of points:
1. Whether you like it or not, Internet debate on the subject of atheism, religion, church-and-state, and so forth have been going on for a long time. I myself got involved back in 1986 via the Usenet groups talk.origins and alt.atheism. The software in use back then resembled email, which made a quote-and-comment style very natural. Yes, it encouraged a crude cut-and-thrust repartee, but it also focussed attention on logical fallacies, exposed selective and mis-quotation, and made it easy to rebut weak and time-worn arguments that were dealt with in the various FAQs. Limited access to the Usenet and Internet meant that the participants were almost all academics, students, and geeks. The culture has persisted.
2. I get the feeling (though I would be happy to be proved wrong) that many “implicit atheists” take the long view, in an almost Marxist way. Regardless of the petty affairs of the day, god is dead, and the duty of all people is to come together to build a post-religious society. This is all well and good, but as S. Wallerstein noted above, many of us “Gnus” feel compelled to address contemporary political manifestations of a religion which seems to be taking and awfully long time to die. My objection to Sir Martin Rees’s recent actions, for example, are not based on whether his atheism is “authentic”, or whether he’s helping to make the 22nd century safe for atheism. Having watched unscrupulous Christianists manipulating a senile Antony Flew for propaganda purposes, I have no doubt that Rees is giving aid and comfort to those who seek to replace science education with religious mythology.
3. One significant factor in raising the temperature (and temper) of discourse is the way in which the Internet internationalizes things. As an expat Brit living in the US, I’m following with great concern the debate about the role of religion in a reconstituted House of Lords. The established role of the Church of England, the idea of adding religious leaders of other faiths, and the spectre of de facto and even de jure Sharia Law; these are all live, vital political issues which inevitably lead to critical debate about the relationship between religion and ethics. Meanwhile atheists in the US are concerned about the teaching of evolution, abortion, right-to-die, religious discrimination in the Armed Forces, and so forth. Sometimes debate spills over the lines, as we saw today, but increasingly the lines are blurring – creationism in England, murmuring of “Christian monarchy” in the USA.
4. During WW2, my mother worked in the secret agency that was planning the administration of Germany after the Allied victory. As she told me, she never talked about her work with her friends in the British Army and Royal Air Force, partly because it was secret, but also because taking eventual victory for granted seemed presumptuous and disrespectful to those who were still risking – and losing – their lives.
5. Atheists, whether explicit or implicit, know that religions are not divine institutions. So what are they? I see them as political and tribal groups, with shared rituals and strong feelings about identity, membership and “otherness”. (I tend to agree with Atran’s analysis.) To the extent that their politics affects me, I must respond. It seems to me that implicit atheists choose to avoid this. But I might be wrong.
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 maryhelena 
 April 25, 2011 at 4:22 am
Joseph: “When the New Atheists are willing to accept real human responsibility for the abominations they attribute to a mythical beast called religion they will have taken a giant leap forward.”
OK, Joseph, so bottom line is this – once the often unpleasant and mocking rhetoric is put aside (for those of us who don’t care for this approach) then what is it that is left that the ‘implicit’ atheists don’t like? The fact that the New Atheists have little understanding of *religion*? And if this is the case, what are the atheist NT scholars doing about it? Because that is where this whole ‘debate’ hinges. What is religion? It’s no use throwing intellectual bricks on evolutionary biologists/scientists – as though they are at fault for not studying the finer points of theology. They are dealing with what they see and hear, on the ground, so to speak. Those atheist NT scholars who know better, who know that religion and theology are not synonymous terms – should, surely, be offering something more in this debate than simply censure of the New Atheists.
So, Joseph, I’m throwing the ball back in your court – back to where there is possibility for a different road forward. The New Atheists need a helping hand not a kick in the belly. And what exactly is prohibiting the ‘implicit’ atheist NT scholars and historians from offering that helping hand? Are they really so blind to the obvious, that NT scholarship, even that of atheists scholars, is peddling nonsense. And if they are aware of the nonsense, what keeps them from speaking out loud and clear – in nice academic language by all means….Ah, but when we come to the NT and it’s interpretations – well then, even atheist scholars are singing along, perhaps out of tune, but singing along nevertheless, to that old siren song of NT interpretation – the assumed historical Jesus.
And what are these atheist scholars doing when some atheists challenge this assumption – down comes the axe on any ahistoricists/mythicist in view. My, but these ‘implicit’ atheists are great at condemnation but fail so greatly at offering anything at all to move this intellectual battle against theology forward. Steph’s recent post, on another blog, where she rode rough-shod over the character and integrity of Neil Godfrey, and his blog, Vridar, clearly displayed the hostility from NT atheist scholars to having their cherished assumptions challenged. Shameful.
Scott Atran in speaking at an atheist Beyond Belief conference a few years ago, said, in regard to the input of atheist scientists and philosophers at the conference, regarding how to deal with the irrationality of human life: “It makes me embarrassed to be a scientist and an atheist”. I think his words are just as relevant, if not more so, to the atheist NT scholars and historians who are failing to mount the barricades against the theological enemy that continues to cause social and political dangers.
That’s my Easter Meditation – and it’s one that hopes for resurrection, for new life and a new spirit to take forward a humanitarian struggle that can benefit us all.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:07 am
Scott Atran says it perfectly. But you are wrong about the axe and ahistoricity, which is only dimly related to atheism anyway. Not believing/thinking that Jesus existed has nothing to do with atheism unless you are committed to a stock of foregone dogmas.
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 maryhelena 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:35 am
And I never did equate atheism with the ahistoricists position. Of course, theist can be ahistoricists – that, surely, goes without saying…
My point was atheist NT scholars who bring down the axe upon the ahistoricist/mythicist position. Sorry, I can’t link to steph’s post re her rant against Neil Godfrey and his Vridar blog – the post has been taken down – seems the submit button was clicked without much thought…
“And what are these atheist scholars doing when some atheists challenge this assumption – down comes the axe on any ahistoricists/mythicist in view.”

 
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:34 am
@Maryhelena: “the atheist NT scholars and historians who are failing to mount the barricades against the theological enemy that continues to cause social and political dangers.” Now that is interesting language from someone who doesn’t like tough language!
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 maryhelena 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:37 am
Depends on the context…..talking to believers is one thing – talking to scholars who should know the difference between apples and oranges, is something else…;-)

 
 
 steph 
 April 25, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Hi Maryhelena, you do not say who ‘atheist NT scholars’ are supposed to be. Apart from Michael Goulder, who was careful enough even quite a while ago to self-identify as a ‘non-aggressive atheist’, to make clear even then, even in England, that he did not share atheist contempt for religious people, the small number of non-religious NT scholars known to me do not self-identify as ‘atheist’ because they do not hate religious people as much as this term is normally taken to indicate.
Secondly, the historical Jesus is presented as a result of years of research, not as an ‘assumption’. If this conclusion is wrong, it needs to be shown to be wrong. People like Doherty, Murdoch, Zindler and their public internet reception, have inspired the writing of a whole book to refute the main existing arguments that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist as a historical figure. The necessary research is however naturally taking some time, as it is being done conscientiously by a scholar, not in instantaneous blog comments.
Thirdly, Neil keeps misrepresenting, and making fun of, both Christian New Testament scholars and secular New Testament scholars alike. I spent alot of time last year trying to discuss and defend two scholars’ work from misrepresentation. However I was misrepresented, slandered, likened to a ‘vampire’ as Paula Fredrikson was likened to a ‘naughty schoolgirl’, Casey was called a ‘liar’ by commenters, and it goes on. Both Crossley and Casey have expressed to me verbally that they have no wish to interact on his blog and be slandered in the same way. Casey has read and approved my side of the discussion. However the whole episode caused me alot of personal distress and wasted time, that I have no wish to be associated with those people again. It is hardly surprising that some of his critics are at least half as rude as he is. I do not however see that we, ie Casey, Crossley, Deane Galbraith or I, have misrepresented him.
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 maryhelena 
 April 25, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Steph – your post, your rant, against Neil Godfrey and his blog, Vridar, was not evidence of a scholarly approach to debate. That this post has now been removed clearly demonstrates that it was what it was – a rant against a man who is able to expose the holes in the published work of an atheist scholar, Maurice Casey. Oh great, another scholar with an upcoming book against the ahistoricists/mythicists – thank god for the internet – and the public shredding the book will get.

 
 Neil Godfrey 
 April 26, 2011 at 4:20 am
Steph, I am sorry that you have seen my posts as misinterpreting and making fun of other scholars, and in particular I must defend myself against your accusation of name-calling and worse.
I have a great deal of respect for a lot of biblical scholarship — and its scholarly authors — and have posted many reviews and discussions of scholarly works of a wide variety of views on my blog (including some ideas from the thesis of the author of this blog).
I have received positive feedback from a number of mainstream biblical scholars in response, several of which have been publicly posted in the comments. I was once asked by a academic editor to prepare some of my posts for publication in a scholarly journal. There have been a few times when I have inadvertently misrepresented a scholar (e.g. Mark Goodacre and R. Joseph Hoffmann), and both times when notified I immediately apologized and corrected my post.
At the same time I have found some scholars and scholarly students comment on my posts with obscenities, foul language, and personal abuse.
Yes, I have sometimes injected some humour into some posts where I do address some fundamental logical fallacies in certain arguments and methodological approaches. Surely a little levity is allowable from time to time as long as it does not descend into personal insult or ridicule.
Your imputation that I called you a vampire and Fredriksen a naughty schoolgirl are absolutely false. Yes, I did twice address certain repeated behaviours with colourful analogies, but in both online and offline personal communications I have spoken to you with respect and attempted to work towards peaceful resolutions of our differences. I have also addressed Fredriksen’s views with positive respect a number of times on my blog.
I do admit to one partial exception to the above, and I have never been able to tell if Dr James McGrath is wilfully twisting my posts or blinded by preconceptions to my meaning. Even in this case I did express regret on his own blog for once losing my temper with him.
And yes, I do speak out if I believe a scholar is betraying his or her responsibility as a public intellectual for some reason and either fanning public bigotry and ignorance or culpably making misleading claims.
Many of my posts are reflections on scholarly articles and books, and I believe you will find listed in the dozens of authors in my blog categories many positive comments, and where I express criticisms I address the arguments without any personal abuse whatever.

 
 steph 
 April 26, 2011 at 11:58 am
Maryhelena: It was not a rant. It was a conclusion drawn from my attempts at discussion last year. The book will be of no interest to internet mythers. I’m sure they will do as they normally do on the internet and is irrelevant. Casey does not identify as an ‘atheist’ scholar as I explicity stated in my comment above.
I spent a long time trying to defend the work of Crossley and Casey last year from misrepresentation and other things as I explained above, but the whole episode was time consuming and caused me alot of personal distress. I received personal emails, abusive, I replied asking him to send no more emails, he unsubscribed me, I never resubscribed and have not received his posts since. I have copies of our ‘correspondence’ in my sent file. What Neil suggests, contradicts the evidence I have. As a result Casey is writing a whole book to refute these mythicists, engaging with the main mythicist authors. It will of course take some time for him to complete, because it is a scholarly work, not an instantaneous blogger response. I wanted no more to do with the blogger side of it and consequently do not wish to pursue conversation myself. My comment on Deane’s review was a response to another comment posted on Deane’s review, claiming Neil had refuted the book being reviewed. When I saw Neil’s nasty post later, which had explicitly picked on me, quoting my initial comment which was in regard to Deane’s review (in which I had quoted Deane describing Casey, back at Deane, to describe Deane – ie a joke (which Neil missed)) I was upset. The post (which rudely ignored Deane’s name, referring to him as ‘someone’ who had written a favourable review) had evidently been written before I wrote the comment below. But seeing my name slandered all over again in Neil’s commenters too, upset me and I didn’t want myself associated with that blog all over again. I asked Deane to remove my comment with Neil’s name in it, from his post, but both Casey and Deane tried to dissuade me. But I didn’t want to be associated with Neil so I eventually convinced Deane to remove my post for my peace of mind. Deane commented himself on Vridar but his comments I think were removed. Here is the comment responding to the comment on Deane’s review from Maurice Casey’s files:
“I was sorry to read a reference to the criticisms of Casey by unlearned mythicists Godfrey and Carr who do not understand any of his arguments because they are not learned enough to do so. In particular, they do not read Aramaic, the language which Jesus spoke, and consequently they do not understand Casey’s arguments from Aramaic. They constantly depend, as in the post you mention, on elementary work which is out of date and which he consequently did not discuss in a one volume life of Jesus published in 2010. It is now well known that there are Latin words such as ‘denarius’ in Mark (e.g. Mk 12.15) because it was a genuine Roman article which Pharisees and Herodians could be guaranteed to have even in the Temple, whereas Jesus had no such thing. Reputable scholars no longer believe that this is because Mark must have been written in Rome, let alone that its background is seriously in Latin rather than Aramaic. Casey explicitly carries forward the work of Crossley, The Date of Mark (2004), and argues for an unfinished Gospel of Mark. Neil is a former member of the Worldwide Church of God, who converted firstly to that, and held evidence, argument and critical scholarship in contempt. Then he converted to mythicism, and continued to hold evidence, argument and critical scholarship in contempt, from an opposite perspective. Carr appears to have a similar background possibly, and constantly writes anti-Christian comments all over other blogs. They both constantly misrepresent and appear to hate Casey, Crossley and myself because we are all non-religious (Casey left the Anglican church in 1962, Crossley and myself have never been religious or believed in any gods): they have a conviction that we should all believe that Jesus did not exist, and we do not fit into their world.”

 
 steph 
 April 26, 2011 at 12:04 pm
This is taking a great deal of time and distress to compile, Maurice Casey is gathering it from his files, but initially he has this: on me as a “vampire”, Neil Godfrey writes:
1. On 2010/05/30 at 10.51 p.m.
Hoo boy, Steph. For you to complain about rudeness is like a vampire declaring an outrage if someone shows it the sign of the cross.
2. His comments on Fredriksen as a ‘naughty school girl’ are as follows:
“The flippant arguments of Stephanie Fisher
 Dr Paula Fredriksen is one scholar who did “respond” to something Doherty had written, but her response demonstrated that she at no point attempted to read Doherty’s piece seriously.
I would even compare her responses to those like a naughty schoolgirl who has no interest in the content of the lesson, believing the teacher to be a real dolt, and who accordingly seeks to impress her giggly “know-it-all” classmates by interjecting the teacher with smart alec rejoinders at any opportunity.
Fredriksen’s responses indicate a stubborn ignoring of the theme and content of Doherty’s argument, and consist of a series of superficial quips on particular phrasings and sentences read without any grasp of their context. Her approach as is if to think the subject was beneath her, and Doherty could not possibly be saying anything new. Her remarks, and Doherty’s responses, can be found here.
In other words, even in making an appearance of addressing Doherty, Fredriksen was really treating the exercise as something of a joke.
I mention this to compare her approach with another emerging scholar. Some may think Fisher’s views of Doherty unworthy of a response, and from one perspective I agree. But I also think it’s it’s not a bad idea to have a response posted to views from someone whom others can view as speaking with some academic authority.”
There is more to follow but it will take some time as Casey’s file is big. It includes comments about McGrath as McDaft, and New Testament scholars as ‘silly detectives’.

 
 steph 
 April 26, 2011 at 12:09 pm
I think alot of it is showing up from February to June posts last year, and continues even after I had stopped contributing to and reading the posts. But I need a break from it now… I never wanted to confront these comments and attacks on me and others, again.

 
 maryhelena 
 April 26, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Steph, don’t do it – don’t drag this thing out between yourself and Neil. If it’s upsetting for you – walk away. Don’t continue to stir the pot. Neil will continue to do what he does – expose any NT scholar who writes nonsense arguments re an assumed historical JC.
We are all different – but we want the same thing in the end – a more human social/political environment. How we each go about our goal might seem illogical to someone else. But it’s going to take all sorts of people, all sorts of methods, if a humanist environment is going to ever become a reality. The theological ‘enemy’ is complex – so too will be the range of action necessary to confine it to a restricted area.
The ahistoricist/mythicist arguments are not going to go away. Sure, it’s possible to find fault with Doherty, or Wells or whoever – but the fundamental premise – no historical gospel JC – cannot be rejected out of hand. To do that requires evidence for a historical gospel JC – and that is not going to be forthcoming. So, yes, like those New Atheists – the atheist ahistoricist/mythicists are not going to keep quite…
Steph – let it go – fight your own battles and leave Maurice Casey to his own….

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 6:56 pm
“To do that requires evidence for a historical gospel JC – and that is not going to be forthcoming.” Just a word from an uncommitted player: the existence of literary sources is prima facie evidence of something happening. This may seem a niggling point but it is not a question of evidence but the nature of the evidence. I know that even many myth theorists, including presumably Neil, agree with at least this much, yes?

 
 maryhelena 
 April 26, 2011 at 7:08 pm
Of course, the gospels are evidence of ‘something happening’…..The ninety nine dollar question is What???
As for Neil, I’ve no idea what he thinks may have happened…

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 7:11 pm
They are very specific about what. The question is the nature of the evidence, not the what.

 
 maryhelena 
 April 26, 2011 at 7:38 pm
The nature of the evidence? It’s literary evidence – a story. What that story is about is the question. Is that gospel story history or is it something else. Is the JC character historical or fictional. And if fictional – what was that character created for – for what purpose. A story – just a story? Or is there something else there. It’s a Jewish story – Jewish stories are ‘salvation’ stories. God did this and that for his chosen people. If that is the type of Jewish story that the gospels are telling – then it’s a history book we need…OK, not so simple – Josephus has made a dogs dinner of Herodian history – and that’s another story….
I’m not sure who the ‘they’ are – you mean certain ahistoricists/mythicists? Can’t put us all in the same boat…….I beat my own drum…;-)

 
 
 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 25, 2011 at 8:06 am
Shawn:
I can empathize with and understand your justified anger towards religion, given your life experience.
I find it more difficult to empathize with the anger of
 Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, since none of them, as far as I know, has suffered the same oppression.
Perhaps it’s solidarity with those oppressed by religion on their part, a noble sentiment at times, but in many cases also one which masks a need to channel anger and scorn towards an easy and convenient target.
Reply

 Shawn 
 April 26, 2011 at 8:14 am
I think they take offense by the religious often suggesting that the creation story and other religious beliefs are as credible as scientific theories. The easiest way to motivate a scientist to speak is by speaking ignorantly, of course a good scientist that is also a good teacher would educate you and try not to make you feel like an idiot. Not just because that is the nice thing to do, but because people tend to be more resistant to your ideas if you start out by insulting them.
In general though, I think one problem is many atheists approach the dialog with anger and cynicism. They attack the issue head on and pound it into submission (hence militant atheist). I’ve found myself attempting to use a Socratic method in discussion, primarily because skepticism is a powerful factor in favor of atheism and asking questions is often contagious.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:02 pm
It’s true: there is nothing intrinsically sensational(ist) about the conclusion that Jesus did not exist as long as it’s being considered on the basis of evidence and not merely analogy. Imagine trying to argue against the historical existence of MLK Jr on the basis of how similar his sermons are to other African-American preachers. –You’ll argue that we have much more to go on in the case of the modern figure. Exactly: it makes the argument from analogy weaker because it’s ancient and we have many fewer examples.

 
 Geoff Arnold 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:18 pm

In general though, I think one problem is many atheists approach the dialog with anger and cynicism. They attack the issue head on and pound it into submission (hence militant atheist).
But what you are describing is simply the way contemporary political “debate” takes place. (And I don’t think it was much more civil in past centuries, either.) And this should be expected, because the events that typically provoke a response from atheists are political actions – school prayer, or religious inscription is public buildings, or legal judgements which reflect religious bias. Speaking for myself, I rarely find myself engaged in such discussions with religious moderates, because there really isn’t a lot to talk about. (When someone like Andrew Sullivan says in his blog today that he is “epistemologically emphatically not a rationalist”, it’s unclear how a debate might proceed.)
I’m also curious why the word “militant” is so casually applied to vocal atheists, but rarely to equally forceful religious leaders. I suppose one could draw the conclusion that all religious leaders are assumed to be militant…

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:25 pm
I agree that the word militant is now being spread so wide and thin that it’s meaningless: anyone who defends an idea vigorously gets smeared with a term that’s coming out of the war on “terror.” I’d be happy to see it fade away.

 
 
 
 artm 
 April 25, 2011 at 6:56 pm
By this logic we may empathize with a slaves who hates (the mythical beast of) slavery, but not with people who oppose slavery even though they never suffered the same oppression.
There are some implicit abolitionists who think: look, I know slavery is bad and all but let’s be realists: we live in the world were slavery exists and most slave owners are moderates and are really nice to their slaves and some even secretly don’t believe in the institute of slavery, but aren’t willing to openly admit it because they don’t want to upset their less moderate parents. Let’s just look for a way to peacefully coexist with slavery and hope that it will disappear naturally.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Do you really think an opinion about God is the same as an opinion about slavery? All I can say is, it is an analogy.
Reply

 artm 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:50 pm
No, I don’t think it’s the same. Yes, it’s an analogy.
Nevertheless, almost everything you say about religion can be said about slavery:
Slavery is an idea. It doesn’t hurt on its own. It’s people practicing slavery who hurt other people. My grandfather fifty generations ago probably owned a couple of my other grandfathers. How can I reject that. Slavery is part of history. If it wasn’t for slavery many beautiful or at least impressive buildings probably wouldn’t exist.
The New Abolitionists don’t hold degrees in doulology, so they can’t be taken seriously by the learned men.
Since arguments of this form don’t work to justify tolerance towards slavery, they can’t work to justify tolerance toward religion. Other arguments could, these ones can’t. Or I’m wrong.

 
 
 
 Jim 
 April 26, 2011 at 3:46 pm
atheists arguing amongst themselves! it’s like christmas and easter all at the same time! thank you!!!!
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 4:56 pm
It doesn’t get better, I know. I suspect the ones with weapons will win. I’m an apatheist.
Reply

 artm 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:39 pm
It’s not like apartheists came up with schisms on our own, are we?

 
 
 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Shawn:
I don’t doubt that your childhood experience of religion was oppressive and intellectually/spiritually asphyxiating, but surely, not all experiences of religion are oppressive and spiritually deadening.
Let me try to explain with an analogy. Say that someone writes about his or her experience working in a factory for Levi Strauss in Bangladesh, describing an environment of exploitation and poor labor conditions. I would tend to believe her, for many reasons, among which is the fact that the price of jeans has not gone up in 20 years, which means that they are cutting labor costs.
I would also solidarize with her oppression and exploitation and participate in actions tending to better her situation, including boycotting Levi Strauss jeans.
Now, let’s say that she goes on to condemn capitalism in general as the cause of her exploitation.
I don’t agree with her perception, since there is nothing inherent to capitalism which implies exploitation, but I would understand her point of view. Probably, if I had to work in a sweat shop in Bangladesh, I would blame capitalism in general myself.
Now, let’s say that she says that the only solution to her exploitation is a Leninist-style revolution, in which capitalists as a class are expropriated by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In that case, I would strongly disagree with her point of view, but given what she has been through, I would understand her rage and her reaction.
Now, let’s say that a tenured professor of Mathematics at Harvard, who has never been to Bangladesh nor speaks the language nor understands the culture begins to blog every day about the horrors of exploitation in Bangladesh.
Fine. Solidarity with the exploited is a virtue. However, as Aristotle points out, all virtues are a mean between two extremes, in this case, between passivity faced with injustice and over-reaction/extremism.
Now let’s say that said professor begins to call for an immediate end of capitalism in his daily blog and a Leninist dictatorship of the proletariat.
I would wonder why. I would wonder why so much anger against capitalism and so energy dedicated to denouncing it, when Harvard, after all, is a product of capitalism, when he lives in a country which capitalism has made very prosperous, in spite of obvious social and economics inequalites. I would wonder if he has a greater need than normal to discharge anger against an easy target.
There is a song: everyone needs someone to love. In my experience, everyone needs someone to hate, and many of the online New Atheists appear to me to be very similar to the Leninist Harvard professor, with a need to hate, a need directed against religion as well as an accentuated need to feel superior to others.
I hope that I’ve made my point of view clearer.
Reply

 artm 
 April 27, 2011 at 1:28 am
Good analogy, but like any analogy – imperfect.
In theory capitalism doesn’t have to produce exploitation. In practice it does. A good analogy to religion as studied by theologians and as practiced by, say, taliban.
In theory Leninism has to produce terror. You can’t do away with it, terror is one of its constituents. How is that an analogy to the New Atheism?
Your hypothetical professor lives in a capitalist society and enjoys its fruits. Do the New Atheists live in a religious society? No. They do enjoy many a fruit of religion though, that’s true.
Reply
 
 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 27, 2011 at 9:59 am
artm:
Most analogies are imperfect, but let me gloss my analogy.
First of all, we have two complex phenomena, which produce ills and benefits. Religion ranges from fundamentalist Islam to Reform Judaism and Zen Buddhism;
 capitalism runs from the sweatshops of Bangladesh and Cambodia to the welfare economies of northern Europe, with their government healthcare plans, good wages and decent pensions.
Second, we have people who are directly oppressed by one form or another of religion or capitalism, for example, gays in Islamic societies or workers in sweatshops in Bangladesh.
We have a duty, insofar as we have duties, to solidarize with those people and to listen to them with acceptance and empathy, even when we may not entirely agree with the conclusions that they draw from their unfortunate experiences. Thus, if a lesbian woman from Iran cries out that religion per se is the cause of her plight, I will heed her pain without pointing out that lesbian weddings are fine in the context of Reform Judaism, another religion.
I will have a similar reaction when someone is oppressed or intellectually suffocated by evangelistic protestantism or Catholicism.
Next, we have a group of people not directed oppressed by either religion or capitalism, in the first case, Dr. Dawkins and Dr. Coyne and in the second case, my hypothetical tenured professor of mathematics at Harvard, who could be compared to Dr. Chomsky with regard to capitalism or to Sartre at his worst regarding capitalism.
I agree that their solidarity with oppression is a virtue.
However, when they make the jump from solidarity with the oppressed to a life-long crusade against Religion or Capitalism as almost Platonic entities, my warning lights go on.
Why? Because I distrust the saviors of humanity, especially those who come from on high. If you trust them, there is not much that we can say to one another. Note that I emphasize those saviors of humanity who come from on high, not those who emerge from among ranks of the oppressed.
I distrust them first of all because I distrust their motives. I generally find them to be moved by an exalted will to power, a need to dominate rather than by a genuine care for the oppressed. That exalted will to power generally either leads them to make terrible mistakes and misjudge situations (Che Guevara, for example) or to use social change as a means for their own personal power trip (Lenin or Fidel Castro).
I see the intolerance and belligerence of the
 online New Atheists as a symptom of that exalted will to power, a will to power that frightens me all the more since it is unconscious of itself and fueled by infinite self-righteousness.
Note that in no way do I condemn or criticize the oppressed when in anger they rise up against their oppressors. If the gays of Iran burn mosques and then churches as a symbol of religion (if there are churches in Iran), I will observe without criticism. If a Harvard professor urges the gays of Iran to burn mosques and churches, my warning lights go on.
However, not only do I distrust the motives of the saviors of humanity (and recall that for a Leninist or for a New Atheist, the ills of humanity have one and only one cause, in the first case, capitalism and in the second case, religion), I distrust the results:
 the results of attempts to construct a utopia on earth, either a planet without capitalism or one without religion, are always disastrous.
Can we imagine a world without religion? Why would we imagine that a world without religion would be populated by only rational beings, as the New Atheist seem to? Wouldn’t people find new, non-religious pretexts to vent their irrational impulses? What positive functions does religion play in the lives of some people (I think of my parents, for whom, as they grow very old, Judaism plays a completely positive role in their lives) and what would replace those positive functions in a godless world? What ethical values does religion transmit and what institutions would transmit those values in a godless world? What right do I (I’m an atheist) have to
 try to destroy the heartfelt religious beliefs of others, as long as they do no harm? What harm does liberal religion do to anyone? What benefits does liberal religion bring us? Why should I be concerned if others believe in what I consider to be harmless illusions?
Reply

 maryhelena 
 April 27, 2011 at 1:52 pm
@ S. Wallerstein: “What right do I (I’m an atheist) have to try to destroy the heartfelt religious beliefs of others, as long as they do no harm? What harm does liberal religion do to anyone? What benefits does liberal religion bring us? Why should I be concerned if others believe in what I consider to be harmless illusions?”
The right you do have, whether atheist or not, is the right to judge ideas – a right that is the cornerstone of intellectual evolution. No ideas are immune. Sure, you don’t have to accost your neighbour in the street and tell them they are believing in delusions. Seeking new knowledge is not an interest of most people. But for those who are interested in pushing forward the boundaries of knowledge, in this case knowledge related to our theological and religious heritage, they cannot be told to shut up because someone’s feelings or comfort zone is being threatened. It is not a question of liberal religion doing no harm, so therefore, leave its adherents to their delusions – it is a case of intellectual evolution being no respecter of person, time or place.
Christianity has been called ‘the mother of heretics’ – heresy is it’s bread and butter. Today, of course, heretics are not burned at the stake – but that does not mean that heretics are any more welcome today than they were in days of yore. The spirit of that great inquisition remains. New ideas are not welcome. So, perhaps, don’t knock those who do tread the path of heresy – it’s not an easy path – but it’s a path that is an honourable one.
Reply
 
 
 artm 
 April 27, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Thanks. Now I understand where you (s. wallerstein) are coming from. I do share some of these intuitions.
Reply
 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 27, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Mary Helena:
If you read my above post, you’ll see that I solidarize with those heretics or rebels who struggle against oppression. If that is your case, all my best to you.
My criticisms apply to best-selling professional Atheists, who far from paying costs for their criticism of religion, reap only benefits, as they live in environments, say, Oxford, where atheism is “in”. I fail to understand in what sense Hitchens or Dawkins is a heroic heretic, although you well may be one in your own way. In fact, in many circles, Hitchens and Dawkins represent the New Orthodoxy.
In fact, I feel that critics of the New Atheists, such as Julian Bagini (spelling?), Jeremy Strangroom, Jean Kazez and our own Dr. Hoffmann, are
 closer to contemporary heretics, as they have the courage to stand alone against the crowd that is the online New Atheist mob, headed by Coyne and Co.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 27, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Sam, thanks for recognizing that the lone wolves out here have a huge job of asking people to be more cautious. A battle against religion, like a war of terror, is hopeless. And a war against religious people is simply preposterous. Jeremy and Julian, I feel, are intellectual; comrades, though we all have slightly different slants. I do not know Dr Karez but admire her work and level headedness. And that is what we need. A level headed approach to unbelief.
Reply
 
 
You’re Doing It Wrong! « Choice in Dying says:
 April 28, 2011 at 11:17 am
[...] While it is true that what is called the New Atheism is much more overt and declarative than the old implicit atheism championed by Joseph Hoffmann, it is untrue that this atheism wants to establish explicitly atheist forms of governance. What the [...]
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 28, 2011 at 3:54 pm
I don’t think I’ve talked much about forms of governance per se–have I? As in world domination? Nor do I identify as an old style implicit atheist. There has always been proactive extreme atheism, so you would first have to distinguish between th atheism, say of the American Atheists, which is anything but implicit and the Gnus; again, I don’t identify with either. Secular humanism and the atheism of the academy are probably implicit, and for the latter this is a pedagogical necessity:I would not teach a course “as” an atheist any more than I would teach it as a Presbyterian even if, as in my field, the subject matter touched specifically on the atheist world-view. I am a humanist. Full stop, explicitly. But I think your use of the word declarative is a useful one in describing whatever it is that new atheism turns out to be.
Reply
 
 
 rey 
 May 2, 2011 at 1:27 am
“In other words, the atheist goal of obliterating religion is simply quixotic, and atheists should simply cease and desist with the radical critique of religion.”
This is certainly the case. If the problem atheists have with religion and god is that religions represent god as a tyrant, then instead of attacking god (which only emboldens the most fundamentalist and cruel of religionists to be more cruel and more outspoken, and to proselytize with more zeal)…instead of this pointless, quixotic, attack on the very existence of god, they ought to simply teach a better kinder more rational god. You have to fight religion with religion.
Atheists have to become Deists in other words. It was Deists after all that came up with natural law and human rights. Atheists are just a bunch of complainers taking credit for all the achievements that Deists made. All our freedoms in America depend on the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…” Can you imagine an atheist Declaration of Independence “all men evolved from monkeys and therefore can be killed by the government whenever considered undesirable” or a Christian or Muslim one “all men who are not Christians/Muslims are blasphemers and should be stoned.” Only the Deists could have achieved the success of human rights because only their philosophy really allows for it. Atheism cannot see all men as created equal, since it doesn’t see them as created at all. Thomas Jefferson showed up how to fight crazy religion, and it wasn’t by atheism: it was by Deism. Duh.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 2, 2011 at 4:48 pm
@Rey: This is an interesting thought, about deism I mean. I don’t know what thread it corresponds to here–maybe to another blog, out there–somewhere?
Reply
 
 

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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Moral Landscapes or Human Values?
by rjosephhoffmann

The question is prompted by this week’s NYRB review of The Moral Landscape by H. Allen Orr, a Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester.
Although Orr took his PhD under the supervision of Dr Jerry Coyne, he is very much a freethinker when it comes to the uses and limitations of scientific know-how and know-what.  In a perfectly chivalrous way, he pronounces the three major premises of Harris’s attempt to bridge the gap from polemic to science unsuccessful.

Orr
I have always been skeptical that science, as a purely descriptive field, would help us to navigate the moral universe.  This feeling–and it’s no more than that, and thus has to be regarded as pure cotton–comes less from my training as a  theologian (there, I said it) than from earlier work in linguistics–what we used to call philology when trying to impress girls.  –It never did.
When language analysis moved away from the older classical models that taught us how languages ought (keep your eye on this word) to behave in their various tenses and moods, to the way language actually works, whole new worlds of understanding opened up.  What we learned from the New Linguists like Chomsky & Co. was that language is both a formative and transformative process.  It changes as long as it is living. When it’s dead, it’s merely “studied.” Classical linguistics and classical archeology have in common the fact that their subject matter is no longer breathing and cooperates efficiently.

Language and ethics are not the same thing.  But ethics depends on language and not merely action, and certainly not merely neural activity.  Choices are formulated in language.  Actions are the effect of linguistic cues.  Some ethical actions are merely linguistic–like saying “No.” Some must be terribly complex, like deciding not to fight in a war, or determining whether to end your own life.  As long as you are living the choices are also (to quote James) live options.  When you are dead, they are philosophical premises to be studied in philosophy classes as test cases.
Sam Harris spends less than six pages and a few footnotes on language, preferring instead to locate the throne of morality in physiological functions of the brain, available through neuro-imaging studies. Orr describes the outcome as “far from compelling.”

  It seems odd to try to assess the relationship between two ideas or judgments by analyzing whether the same brain regions are active when each is represented in the human mind. Surely such an assessment requires one to analyze the ideas or judgments themselves. If the same brain regions are active when people mentally perform addition and multiplication, would Harris conclude that the addition/multiplication distinction is illusory?
Given the fact that neuroimaging doesn’t answer primary questions about action, the desirability of “right” or ‘wrong” action or the adjudicative faculties that cause us to describe certain actions as moral or not, it looks for all the world as though Harris has once again turned  interesting possibilities, drawn from a range of disconnected sources, into extravagant claims.  It’s the same sort of rashness that led to his mistaken view of “religion” in his earlier work, The End of Faith, which people happily ascribed to his relative immaturity as a writer.

This isn’t new to the pop-science genre he is writing in, of course, but given that most of the people who read The Moral Landscape will be neither professional ethicists nor professional scientists (a few of each, no doubt), his performance does raise the question of whether this is not just another expression of scientific hubris directed at religious objects.  Orr thinks so:

But there’s a more important point. Harris’s view that morality concerns the maximization of well-being of conscious creatures doesn’t follow from science. What experiment or body of scientific theory yielded such a conclusion? Clearly, none. Harris’s view of the good is undeniably appealing but it has nothing whatever to do with science. It is, as he later concedes, a philosophical position. …Near the close of The Moral Landscape, Harris argues that we can’t always draw a sharp line between science and philosophy. But it’s unclear how this is supposed to help his case. If there’s no clear line between science and philosophy, why are we supposed to get so excited about a science of morality?
It’s for others to judge whether Harris’s performance in the arena passes the test.  Lions are always circling. But his book raises another, more important question. It’s a question about whether someone purporting to write about morality needs to know something about ethics. And it all hinges on the timeless question of How one ought to behave: like a dead language or a living speaker?
Since the late eighteenth century–in theology since Schleiermacher and in philosophy since Kant–ethics has been seen as the last refuge of the religious imagination.  That’s when supernaturalism exploded in Christianity’s face. Even first year philosophy students know what Kant thought about morality and its “demand” on evilly-inclined human nature.  The further history of philosophy, when it comes to the study of morality, has been an attempt to get away from Kant’s categories to the right while fleeing the command ethics of the Bible on the left.
In many ways, Schleiermacher’s system was more profound, drawing out of Kant’s work ideas that remained implicit or obscure.

Schleiermacher
–And the theologian was much more radical, in almost every department, than the Prussian master.
He is a hard read, but his ideas about the formation of ethical ideas was crucial for practically all later philosophical and psychological reflection. Schleiermacher was aware of the chasm between self-consciousness (Cartesian style) and the wider world of immediate experience, which is always both subjective and objective.  Using ideas that would later become standard in psychoanalysis, he described the way in which we are able to “cognize” an inner life of feeling and outward existence of things that present themselves to us for description.  At every step, we are driven by the inner life of feeling and the outer world of experience (things, events), but see ourselves at the center of both–affected by the consciousness of big ideas like nature, world, goodness, and  other ideas, that have only a “temporal” importance–things that are tolerable choices in children but turn out to be illusions in adulthood:

Is it then the case that the first childish objects of enjoyment must, in fact, be lost that the higher may be gained? May there not be a way of obtaining the latter without letting the former go? Does life then begin with a pure illusion in which there is no truth at all, and nothing enduring? How am I rightly to comprehend this? (Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve: A Dialogue on the Celebration of Christmas (trans. W. Hastie; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1890), 33
I mention Schleiermacher because Harris doesn’t.  There is a reference to Hume, and almost nothing on Kant.  A bit on Rawls (a scant, useless two pages), but otherwise an extremely eccentric index of authorities that don’t add up to a coherent picture of much of anything in terms of the history of ethics or a wide syllabus on the subject.  If this were a random list of books I read over my summer vacation it would make more sense than as documentation for work on a serious subject.
I can be criticized for saying this, I’m sure.  After all, pop science or not, this is meant to be ground-breaking work. Most ground-breaking work doesn’t trudge through the cemetery of dead authorities.  It transcends them.  Is that the reason for the omissions?  And as to its ground-breakingness, if not in ethics, then in science: someone much more knowledgeable about how it might be scientifically earth-shaking, like Allen Orr, thinks it is merely peculiar.
Which brings me to a related and belated point.  It wouldn’t bother me in the least if the New York Times announced tomorrow that the the morality code has been cracked, and that all of us belong to one of a million phenotypes that accurately predict how we will act in particular moral situations, especially on Tuesdays.
But we are not quite there yet.  For that reason, philosophical speculation still matters.
The terms ”science”  and “human values” are still to ethics what bacon and eggs are to breakfast: related, but in a way we are at odds to explain.
Orr puts it down to basic semantic confusion (something philosophers and theologians are supposed to look out for)–in this case over a misue of the term “ought”:

Of course science can help us reach some end once we’ve decided what that end is. That’s why we have medicine, engineering, economics, and all the other applied sciences in the first place. But this has nothing to do with blurring the is/ought distinction or overcoming traditional qualms about a science of morality. If you’ve decided that the ultimate value is living a long life (“one ought to live as long as possible”), medical science can help (“you ought to exercise”). But medical science can’t show that the ultimate value is living a long life. Much of The Moral Landscape is an extended exercise in confusing these two senses of ought. Despite Harris’s bravado about ‘how science can determine human values,’ The Moral Landscape delivers nothing of the kind.
But Harris is not exactly to blame for the confusion, the confused cross-ranking of oughts and is’s.  He’s a victim of a culture that wants the distinction overcome by force majuere since “ought” as philosophers, especially ethicists, use the term still bears the marks of its religious birth.  The mere addition of the word “science” to the mix seems to give the word “moral” a degree of support it doesn’t have when it’s left outside to lean on its own flimsy wall.

A serious, well funded, ongoing project devoted to the intersection of ethics and science (or science and human values) is devoutly to be wished.  But it will not happen in the atmosphere of current proprietary thinking, where scientists  (Is this the I want to be Darwin syndrome?) promise more than they can deliver, and ethicists and theologians are ruled out of order because (why?) they have only language to offer.
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Published: April 25, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Bible : categories : ethics : H. Allen Orr : humanism : Kant : morality : New York Review of Books : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : Schleiermacher : The Moral Landscape ..
30 Responses to “Moral Landscapes or Human Values?”

.
 maryhelena 
 April 25, 2011 at 2:40 pm
A review of Harris’s book at The New Humanist
“Test-tube truths”
“Should science guide our moral decisions? Kenan Malik puts Sam Harris’s latest argument under the microscope”.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2538/test-tube-truths
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 25, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Nice :)
Reply
 
 
 Nameless Cynic 
 April 25, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Other thoughts that should be taken into account.
If adoption of religion has any effect in gaining a moral framework, why are so many religious people immoral? It is difficult, if not impossible to determine whether atheists are over- or underrepresented in the prison population, so using that as a measure of morality is a non-starter.
Customarily, this argument is used to promote a specific religion (Christians believing that Christianity is the most moral of all faiths, and Muslims believing that Islam is the only true path to righteousness). Is it merely the presence of a religion in one’s life that creates morality, or does the brand name matter?
Remember, if the flavor of the religion is important, why does every culture in the world have their own version of “Do unto others…”? (A saying which, it could easily be argued, is the actual source of all morality.)
Perhaps the level of empathy in a person is the true key to how moral that person is – you avoid behavior that would hurt another simply because you wouldn’t want to cause the other person pain.
In the end (and remember, you’re the one who brought up linguistics), you have to have a definition of morality before you can actually locate its source, correct? You need to define what is “good” and “bad,” or “right” and “wrong,” and since those terms are often ambiguous (Is it wrong to kill a person? What about killing a murderer? What about euthenasia?), the whole logical structure tends to collapse in on itself.
Reply
 
 Veronica Abbass 
 April 25, 2011 at 5:57 pm
“The question is prompted by this week’s NYRB review of The Moral Landscape. . . .”
What question?
Reply
 
 Veronica Abbass 
 April 25, 2011 at 6:41 pm
“Harris has once again turned interesting possibilities . . . into extravagant claims. It’s the same sort of rashness that led to his mistaken view of “religion” in his earlier work, The End of Faith, which people happily ascribed to his relative immaturity as a writer.”
Who are these people who ascribed Harris’ mistaken view of “religion” to his relative immaturity as a writer?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 25, 2011 at 6:43 pm
I’ll give you a pass because I don’t know you, but I know the style: You really haven’t read any reviews of the book, have you? Viz., Van Harvey in the CSER Review for 2007, to mention just one.
Reply
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 25, 2011 at 6:47 pm
or: http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.848/article_detail.asp
Reply

 Ed Jones 
 April 29, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Joe, having turned to a bonified Christian believer Andrew Klavan for a fuller critique of Sam Harris (who may have exhausted just about any rational secular basis for morality) based on theologian Alister McGrath’s “The Twilight of Atheism”, suggess that you might meaningfully revisit my three comments to “Religion” quoting from The Reality of God by Schubert Ogden (your once intellectual hero). The first quote brought your cmment: “A very nice comment Ed. Thanks.” Only to be followed by “Humanist Deficient?” a critical critique.
 Klevan wrote: “(Harris’) embrace of mystic selflessness and the understanding that love and virture are essential to human happiness, give one hope that even scientific rationalists may one day stumble nigh to the wisdom of Jesus”. I need ask, what do you think?

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 29, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Hi Ed–can you give me the blog address for Klevan; I would like to read more (theoretically)….

 
 
 
 Veronica Abbass 
 April 25, 2011 at 7:12 pm
“I’ll give you a pass because I don’t know you, but I know the style.”
You do know me; I submitted four comments to your April 1st, 2011 article “Bloody Fools.”
Like you, I am fascinated by language, so your use of the word “know” is intriguing. Of course you don’t know me because it is not easy to know someone, even in the electronic sense, from a few responses to one article. As for my style, have you read anything I’ve written?
I haven’t read any reviews of the The End of Faith. Thank you for the links.
PS My first response to the article above was to ask what is the question you refer to in your first sentence: “The question is prompted by this week’s NYRB review of The Moral Landscape by H. Allen Orr. . . .”
This comment has not been posted.
Reply
 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 25, 2011 at 8:27 pm
Harris’s book has not received favorable reviews.
Here is another negative review, this time from Ophelia Benson, with whom I agree on this opportunity.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/sam-harriss-the-moral-landscape/
Reply
 
 John Anngeister 
 April 26, 2011 at 12:31 pm
I’m glad your post scrolled up on my morning tag surf (Kant, Schleiermacher)- I passed over it too quickly last evening.
I haven’t yet given Harris’ writing any serious consideration; I mean, life is short – 1 or 2 interviews has sufficed (in my opinion) to expose his lack of grounds.
But I’m grateful for the quality of thinking here, both yours and professor Orr’s. The subject will not go away, so I appreciate all extra means of re-directing the conversation to higher ground.
Especially liked the rhetorical question about brain-scans for addition vs. multiplication (which regardless of whether it can be answered, still brings up important questions about subtle yet significant distinctions).
I love real science, and real scientific discovery, but I gather from Harris no depth of appreciation for the limits of scientific method.
Anyway thanks again for the post, and the blog – an occasion for reflection this morning.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Thanks John for a lovely, thoughtful post.
Reply
 
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:13 pm
OK, I’m confused. Is the issue here one of comparative philosophy – Hume vs Kant vs Scheiermacher? Or, is it science vs philosophy vs cognitive science vs psychology? Or, is it about linguistics – Chomsky vs everybody? Trying to arrange everything so that they fit neatly into their respective, designated little boxes is not always easy.
I tried to read Harris’s “The Moral Landscape” but couldn’t get very far. Lots of words, but not much substance. OK. I’m not a Harris fan. And I’ll admit that this book is much calmer that others he wrote when his hair was on fire. Anyway, to me anyway, it was kind of like reading Dawkiin’s “The Selfish Gene.” I got it after the first three pages. Now, just think of how many forests could have been saved if the other 380 pages had been left out.
As to this review (of a review,) there is a glaring omission: Humans are not the only animal to exhibit what we might agree to call moral/ethical behavior. Our closest living relatives – chimpanzees and bonobos – have been observed in nature doing what could justifiably be described as a selfless “good.” Some behaviorists have said that elephants occasionally do likewise.
So, the statements here that, “Choices are formulated in language.” and “Actions are the effect of linguistic cues” are just flat wrong. Moral acts are often performed without verbal cues. Take a battlefield, for example, or a tsunami, or a traffic accident, or any of a myriad of other situations that just present themselves in the moment and are responded to, or not, by the beholder – without a call to action.
Moral relativism is alive and well and living in our churches, and boardrooms, and courtrooms, and the halls of Congress, and philosophy 101, down there in room 205.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 26, 2011 at 5:18 pm
@Herb, at root it’s about a guy trying to write a groundbreaking work who doesn’t know much about ethics. fair enough–that’s why the omission of Kant and Co is relevant–but how can he get by without talking about behavioralism, Lorenz, linguistic theory. It’s quite frankly the strangest assortment of “authorities” I’ve ever seen.
Reply
 
 John Anngeister 
 April 26, 2011 at 8:47 pm
Herb, I visited your blog to check on the claim about chimpanzees and bonobos exhibiting moral/ethical behavior. I didn’t see you’ve got anything there on the surface. Are these studies supposed to be well-known?
Lacking any sense of what these ‘observers’ were looking for, I would challenge your definition of selfless good in regard to animal behavior – if you will allow me to disallow non-ethical motives like parental instinct, quid pro quo (including sex) and anything that does not involve real sacrifice of a present good in the interest of a fellow.
Reply

 Nameless Cynic 
 April 27, 2011 at 10:57 am
@John – I guess you don’t have Mad Googlin’ Skillz like some of us. There are several studies that show this, the most famous being Bongo.
The problem is, the results are hotly debated because creationists refuse to admit that anyone but humans show moral behavior. (Because morality is rooted in the soul, which only humans have, essentially.)
They employ mind-numbing levels of apologetics, trying th explain this behavior with “actions don’t matter, it’s intent! What you’re thinking when you engage in moral behavior is the important thing! And… um… since monkeys… can’t… ummmm… think…”
They tend to trail off into mumbling and stuttering, and a good time is had by all.

 
 
 
 DoctorM 
 April 26, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Excellent review— and I especially like the thoughts on language. My own background is in History rather than ethics, so I’ll be a while analyzing my immediate impression that there’s something empty in Harris’ work. Other than that— I discovered your blog a few weeks ago, and I’ve enjoyed it and recommended it (though I wish your entries could be linked to Facebook).
Reply
 
 John Anngeister 
 April 27, 2011 at 1:02 pm
@Nameless - I am not what you are probably calling “creationist” but I have enough moral philosophy to know that there are good non-religious arguments (chiefly Kantian) for the case that recognition of duty and selfless intent in its execution are two characteristics of actions which distinguish moral action from non-moral action. (this has nothing to do with immoral action – which only takes place if moral action is possible).
In my opinion Bongo’s thinking (however clever) is on a non-moral level (neither moral nor immoral) as long as it does not include determinations to selfless behavior made from an a priori awareness of duty.
I perceive you have no experience with apologists for either morality or religion who are not bound by false notions of an inerrant Bible.
Or is my comment no different than those others which, in your experience, you have categorized as ‘mind-numbing’?
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 27, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Not to keep things on track but I do find the discussion of Kant interesting as used by Lorenz in his 60′s study on Aggression, where issues like object fixation and militant enthusiasm are discussed as areas that are developed abstractly and morally by humans by affixing labels that differentiate but don’t really distinguish animal and human behavior. A chimp’s hair-raising stiff gaited territorial display Lorenz saw as a close relation of seried ranks of infantry rattling sabers. But even Lorenz saw the rational limits of behavioralism; the chimps will never be Kant, never rationalize their behavior, never say anything as paradoxical as “A truly reasonable man would never kill another.” The basic problem is, Harris promises a naturalistic basis for morality here, then retreats to philosophy for his premises, and returns with a completely different sense of the word “ought.” Orr has him to rights. At the same time, Harris never mentions 75 years of work in behavioral psychology that is directly related to the subject he is addressing, and merely glances at 200 years worth of ethical speculation. I have now read the book twice. it is not just bad, it is absolutely terrible.
Reply
 
 Nameless Cynic 
 April 27, 2011 at 2:32 pm
@John – Words, not actions, define the man? Really?
Bongo hoarded food. The other chimps essentially shunned him, not letting him have more.
“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.” ~John Locke
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 John Anngeister 
 April 27, 2011 at 6:52 pm
You see I had no idea, but now that you have helped me by contributing an example you think has value, I reject it. I don’t see how we get from an act of shunning a food hoarder to any discussion of morality. So there’s no example here, actually.
Locke? Really?
“Interpretations” of a man’s thoughts by his actions is moralism, not moral judgment in the Kantian sense.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 27, 2011 at 7:26 pm
I think I am on John’s team on this. No one is doubting behavioral similarities. But morality is imputed through language, even if the imputing is done to chimpanzees or geese–which is why I brought Lorenz up. Language is not irrelevant because it’s the means through which the moral universe is shaped. And I think that in terms of evolution it is language that fast forwards the species from action to reflective action. Certainly this is what Huxley (as in Julian) thought even before behaviorism was a science. The issue is not Kant or chimps, surely: it’s what we do with a word chimps don’t cipher: Ought.

 
 Nameless Cynic 
 April 28, 2011 at 9:51 am
I fail to see why you feel that words matter. Morality, adhering to a system of moral behavior.

mor·al adj \ˈmȯr-əl, ˈmär-\
1 : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ethical (moral judgments) © 2011 Merriam-Webster
The other monkeys saw that Bongo was doing something that they felt was wrong. They distinguished between good behavior and bad. They made, by definition, a moral judgement.
Are you going to discriminate against them simply because they’re lower on the evolutionary scale? Primates are known to be tool users, several species mate for life, some can learn to use language, all of them show emotion.
Give one a shave and a suit, and I know several humans they could easily replace (and in many cases it would be an improvement).
If a creature makes a moral judgement, how is that not de facto evidence of morality?

 
 
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 April 27, 2011 at 2:43 pm
John Anngeister, there are many studies involving animal behavior, some of which reveal actions that could be interpreted by a reasonable person as “moral.” If you are really interested in this subject, a good starting point might be Jared Diamond’s “The Third Chimpanzee.” (Genetically, humans are closed to the common chimpanzee and the bonobo than any others in the great ape family.) Of course, anything by Jane Goodall, who spent a lifetime studying chimpanzees in the wild, would be interesting. Her 1986 book, “The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior” describes some of the chimps’ “moral code.” More recently, there is “Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals” by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce. Published in 2009, it covers the moral lives of such commonly studied animals as primates, wolves, household rodents, elephants, and dolphins, among others. Dolphins, of course, are legendary for their “selfless good” in saving who-knows-how-many humans. Anyway, there is much more literature on this subject as a quick google search will show.
As to your challenge to my “definition of ‘selfless good’ in regard to animal behavior,” I refer you to the above. If, after becoming more familiar with those studies, you still wish to challenge my descriptor, which, by th way, I just made up, I would be happy to discuss the matter further.
Reply
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 April 28, 2011 at 5:00 pm
rjosephhoffmann says, “morality is imputed through language, even if the imputing is done to chimpanzees or geese–which is why I brought Lorenz up. Language is not irrelevant because it’s the means through which the moral universe is shaped. And I think that in terms of evolution it is language that fast forwards the species from action to reflective action.” This says, to me anyway, that morality didn’t exist until humans came along with language sufficient to describe it.
I’ve never heard any medal of honor recipient credit his commanding officer for telling him to “get out there in harm’s way and don’t stop till you get yourself killed or nominated for a medal of honor!” No, there is something about those soldiers, something beyond words, that compels them to do what those of us who thought about it for a second and a half would not dare do.
“On Oct. 30, 2004, lifeguard Rob Howes and three women were on a training swim about 100 meters off Ocean Beach near Whangarei on the North Island of New Zealand. While they were swimming, a pod of dolphins suddenly came steaming at them and started circling. The dolphins bunched the four swimmers together and began slapping the water with their tails for about 40 minutes. Howes drifted away from the main group when an opening occurred. It was then that he saw a great white shark several feet away. When the shark started moving toward the women, the dolphins went into hyper-drive. Howes said, ‘I would suggest they were creating a confusion screen around the girls. It was just a mass of fins, backs and human heads.’ The shark left as a rescue boat neared, but the dolphins remained close by as the group swam back to shore.”
So, what, exactly, did the dolphins get out this behavior? Were they after the dolphin equivalent of a medal of honor? Were they doing this for some other reward? Did this action somehow enhance their ability to survive? Did some humans, standing safely on shore, make a psychological evaluation and yell to the dolphins that their behavior was a “selfless good?” Do dolphins have a “Golden Rule” gene?
I think dolphins are just altruistic by nature and that altruism extends, by way of empathy, to other species. In fact, I suspect these dolphins would have done the same exact thing 50,000 years ago, with no language then, as now, to guide them.
Reply
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 April 28, 2011 at 5:29 pm
On reflection, how about starting up a “Dolphin-ism Movement?” From what I understand of their behavior, they seem to be actually living out and practicing most, if not all, of what we call Humanist principles. All the Humanists who are tired of the Gnus could join. I’m pretty sure, though not completely, that dolphins have no evangelistic, fundamentalist religions to deal with, nor anything remotely connected to Catholicism or Islam. Consequently, any Gnus that did sign up would soon get bored and leave anyway. We could have a contest to come up with logos, and motos for t-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs. I think it would make a big splash. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) It’s gotta be a win-win. Thoughts?
Reply
 
 s. wallerstein 
 April 28, 2011 at 5:47 pm
http://www.thenation.com/article/160236/same-old-new-atheism-sam-harris?page=full
A very negative review of Harris’s book and of Harrisism in general.
Reply
 
 Ed Jones 
 April 29, 2011 at 11:24 pm
Joe, Sorry I have only the blog you listed on your April 25th, 6:45 pm comment. I will look for more. Thanks
Reply

 Ed Jones 
 April 30, 2011 at 11:25 am
Correction: It is Klavan not Klevan. My mistake.
Reply
 
 

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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


A Little History: E.H. Gombrich
by rjosephhoffmann

So when the mob had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?” 18 For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him…“Barabbas,” they shouted. (Matthew 27.15f.)
While the Church and the Mosque deserve full marks for perfecting prejudice and instituting successive reigns of terror that afflict some parts of the world even today, it was a short article in the New York Times that made me think about the role of mobs in history.

CBS reporter Lara Logan is speaking publicly for the first time about how between 200 and 300 men sexually assaulted her in Egypt’s Tahrir Square in February.
Logan, who was covering the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s government, told The New York Times a mob separated her from her producer and bodyguard, then tore off her clothes, groped and beat her over the course of about 25 minutes.
“For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands,” Logan told the newspaper.
“My clothes were torn to pieces,” she recalled.
“What really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.”
February seems long ago in the swift stream of world politics and non-stories about birth certificates and Lindsay Lohan’s jail time.  But recall that the story being broadcast while all of this was happening was the dawning of the “Arab Spring.” How can tens of thousands of people calling for the overthrow of a strong-man dictator be wrong?
Human-rightists for the most part were overjoyed at the scenes out of Egypt.  Obama issued mild, and then as the temperature rose, more direct threats: Mubarak must go. Now.  Egyptian dissidents in London and New York talked about a hunger for “real” democracy.
A couple of (highly skeptical) university friends of mine at the Ain Shams said, How can the west be so gullible?  Another: Don’t you notice how few women’s faces are in the crowd?  We were assured that this was not just a public display of testosterone or a prelude to a religiously fanatical regime that despises women making a power grab.  Meanwhile, in a huddle in Tahrir square, Laura Logan was being handraped by 150 Muslim men.

Logan
From Diocletian to Hitler, Franco to Milošević , the fickleness of crowds is something politicans can rely on.
Diocletian used the religion card–Roman religion–to incite crowds in Corinth to riot by accusing Christian women of being prostitutes,  just as his predecessors had used the charge of venality and corruption against the Bacchic cults. In fourth century Alexandria, the unpopular but formidable bishop Athanasius incited crowds to riot and to lynch an opposing bishop named Georgius.  Inciting crowds to riot, by different factions supporting different causes, was a well-developed art in the ancient world.
For every auto da fe performed by the Inquisition, there were hungry gaggles of women and men waiting for the faggots to be lit and the flames to rise–or the noose to be fixed.  And of more recent vintage, Slobodan Milošević fanned the fire of “Greater Serbian” nationalism by manipulating crowds and  promoting xenophobia toward the other ethnicities in Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians were commonly characterised in the media as anti-Yugoslav counter-revolutionaries, rapists, and a threat to the Serb nation.

The modern American tendency is to respect crowds as an outpouring of public opinion–the will of the people–even though crowds have been uniquely implausible sources of real government from the beginning of recorded history.  Hobbes, Tocqueville, Montesquieu, each slightly differently, saw crowds and “mobs” as being linked to fear, something that extends, as Corey Robin says in his study of the subject, from within the recesses of the mass psyche to the uppermost reaches of government, but which can be motivated and manipulated at both ends, the popular and the “sovereign.” Crowds make history.  If an angry crowd is a mob–an emotionally bonded entity demanding change or rights–then a peaceful crowd is democracy in action, but often, with equally uncertain effect.

In America, the ambivalent admiration for numbers has to do with a view of national origins that still infects our understanding of history.  The schoolhouse legend of the American revolution gives us the righteous colonials and the wicked, simpering British.  Paine’s nostrum (“It is absurd for an island to rule a continent”) speaks to the same mentality, but at a time when the population of the United States was about 1,500,000, and of Britain about 7,000,000.  In its cartoon version, it gives us leather-clad warriors hiding behind oak trees picking off ranks of disciplined British baddies with their squirrel guns.

Until a generation ago, textbook versions of How the West Was Won weren’t much better, though the evidence of the ghastliness of the Europeans over two hundred years of encounters with native North and South American civilisations was harder to bury or gloss over.
When I want sanity in such matters, I usually turn to the eminently sane Ernst Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, a book first written on a dare in 1936 just after Gombrich had finished his PhD in art history at the University of Vienna. Of the religious hubris and human greed that motivated the “discoverers” like Cortez and their legal successors, the inheritors of colonial rule in North America, incuding the United States armies of the nineteenth and twentieth century, Gombrich says;

In all parts of America the Europeans proceeded to exterminate the ancient, cultivated peoples in the most horrendous ways. This chapter in the history of mankind is so appalling and so shameful to us Europeans that I would rather not say anything more about it. (LHW, 2005 ed.: p 195)
Gombrich wrote A Little History for a series called in German Wissenschaft für Kinder (Knowledge for Children), and it was meant to be a basic introduction to world history, written in a way that would appeal to the natural curiosity of kids between ten and thirteen–a spur to find out more about their world and their past.  The dare was laid down by Walter Neurath, who also founded the publishing house Thames and Hudson in London: it is one thing to write history for adults.  It is another to boil it down to entertaining essences for children.  Gombrich thought he could do it.
Like many “assimilated” Austrian Jews of his era, Gombrich could write more sensitively about Christianity than many of his Christian contemporaries.  He was a writer with enormous historical intuition for what really mattered.  It was Gombrich (who had been hired by the BBC to monitor German radio broadcasts in 1945) who announced to Churchill that the playing of a Bruckner symphony written for Wagner’s death (Symphony No. 7) meant that Hitler was dead.  A significant part of being a good historian, he believed is having good instincts, a good eye, and an excess of curiosity about how things got to be the way they are.
Because history, for Gombrich, entailed a personal encounter with the events and ideas of the past, it was probably impossible for him to write the kind of “scientific” history that was then the trend in German education and was making inroads in both the United States and Britain. Besides, if he had written that kind of history what child would have read it?  There are hardly any books as good for the purpose even today–which explains why A Little History has remained in print in both English and German for 75 years.
If there is a “theme” in the book, it’s that the past is an ambiguous teacher and the source of unlikely outcomes.  Above all it is “our story,” and as such a tale of remarkable highs and despicable, regrettable lows–ups and downs rather than “progress.”

E.H. Gombrich
Gombrich is not a Hegelian; he is well beyond the view (that feeds finally into Marx) that history is material progression of ideas and events in constant dynamic relation and flow.  He is no positivist: history relies as much on uncontrollable variables as on the verification of data. With Karl Popper, one of Gombrich’s closest friends, he effectively sunk the Enlightenment belief that history behaves like science: science itself is not free of ideological presuppositions.
In the Comtean system that had influenced historiography (the philosophy of historical narrative) throughout the nineteenth century, history can be chopped into discrete periods, from the superstitious to the scientific corresponding to modes of experience and interpretation. In such a system, the “scientific” period marks the end of a process: the period in which knowledge  is associated with (virtually synonymous to) experience, evidence and positive verification. A similar movement in philosophy gave us naturalism.  To the extent imagination, emotion, and morality play a role in historical development, it is largely incidental–flavour not substance: science itself is thought to constitute an adequate critique of metaphysics.

Reign of Terror
Gombrich’s most famous assault on positivist thinking is also his most subtle. It comes in his chapter on the French Revolution, which in the nineteenth century both French patriots and American philosphers saw in terms of the victory of reason over the pomp of aristocracy and the blindness of a capitulating first estate, the Catholic Church.  In fact, the Revolution was watched closely, by legislators in America, by poets in England and by Turkish-Ottomans on the fringes of Vienna. Burke’s famous Remarks (1790) capsulized the concern of many British conservatives that revolution fervor would spread like wildfire ‘and by emulation”:

Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors, until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishing powers that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.
But the young Wordworth, enflamed with enthusiasm for the revolutionary idea, and who participated in Jacobin mob protests at the age of 19,  carrying the British flag:

[...] ‘Twas in truth an hour
 Of universal ferment; mildest men
 Were agitated; and commotions, strife
 Of passion and opinion, filled the walls
 Of peaceful houses with unique sounds.
 The soil of common life, was, at that time,
 Too hot to tread upon.  (Prelude, 9.163-9)…
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven!” (The Prelude, x. 690-4.)
But neither Burke nor Wordsworth nor a hundred similar scraps of “evidence” tell us much about the meaning of the Revolution.  Is it coextensive with its social, religious, economic and political outcomes?  Or is there more to the story than that? To answer that question, you have to ask whether history is a set of conclusions based on the accumulation of evidence, a task that permits us to develop a picture of “what really happened,” or whether the story of what really happened far exceeds the bits that make the picture possible. The role of emotion, enthusiasm, mobs, and revolutionary fervor, combined with the disjunct between the expectation of the revolutionaries and the outcome–the French Republic of 1792–were strong disconfirmation that history could be reduced to its interpreted effects.  In any event, as Eric Osborne has said of the end of the Comtean mindset, history was not like stamp-collecting.

Comte
Gombrich was one of the first historians to challenge the positivist idea that the Middle Ages had been “dark” (a term that came from the poet Petrarch’s complaint about the quality of Latin literature in the fourteenth century). It was instead the end of a long period of political and economic collapse brought on by constant migrations into the ruins of the Empire by northern opportunists who gradually (centuries, not years) became shapers of a new world order.

According to Gombrich, what the middle ages produced was a “starry sky,” where people could again find their way by using points of reference that had been obscured by centuries of collapse, such that people who lived in constant fear of death and violence “no longer lost their way entirely.” The philosophers of the Enlightenment, proud of their location in history, had forgotten that one part of this process was the rediscovery of learning, the resurgence of debate, and the creation of universities like Paris in 1170 and Oxford in 1249.  It was also a period, especially between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, when the Church lost more power to secular authority than in any period prior to the Reformation.

Investiture Controversy woodcut
But Gombrich goes one step further.  The Enlightenment itself, the fountainhead of both good ideas and hopelessly naive ones, is problematical. While most people associate intellectuals like Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau with the period on its French side, Gombrich remarks that France was surprisingly immune from effects that were being felt in England, Russia (with Katherine the Great) and even Poland. Later historians have corroborated the view that the French Revolution and the subsequent reign of terror stands in stark contrast to the relatively calm transition from the Declaration of American Independence in 1776 to the ratification of the Constitution of 1789, a scant thirteen-year period where many of the people who were there at the beginning were also there at the end.  Yet salons and cafe culture in America were decidedly minuscule compared to the culture of Paris and the European capitals in the eighteenth century. Why were the two revolutions so different when their slogans, and ends, were remarkably the same?

The Boston “Massacre”
Mobs played a relatively minor role in the American revolt; a major one in France.  Was America more protestant, more controlled, France more susceptible to gallic passion? Does geography and scant settlement mean that crowds were harder to muster, or the degree of illiteracy mean that written broadsides slower to affect passions? How does positivist historiography settle the question for us?
Gombrich’s focus is on the role of the people–their susceptibility to demagoguery, the idols of the tribe, the promise of quick justice for enemies of an emotional cause and a knack for misreading the consequences of their actions. For the Comteans (Comte himself was born in 1798, just after the worst of the troubles had abated), the Revolution cleared away abuses, the “elegant, prinked, powdered and perfumed” aristocratic privilege, and a whimsical, ostentatious monarchy that had lost touch with the people.  When the dust settled and the revolutionary zeal subsided, the reign of reason was secure and adaptable for use in Comte’s theory of history from religious darkness to scientific light.

July 14, 1789
But this was pure metaphysics. This is not what “really” happened. Gombrich reminds his youthful readers that the reign of terror was  meant to be the reign of reason. Following the execution of Louis XVI, Maximilien Robespierre in dry lawyerly fashion

had Christianity declared an ancient superstition and abolished God by decree…. A printer’s young bride wearing a white dress and and a blue cloak representing the goddess of Reason was led through the streets and people were invited to worship her.
When the moderate Jacobin, Georges Danton,  asked for an end to the introduction of the new cult of reason, compassion for opponents of the regime, and that the beheading of people opposed to exceses of the Revolution be terminated and mercy be shown, Robespierre declared that only enemies of Reason ask for mercy on behalf of criminals.

So Danton too was beheaded, and Robespierre had his final victory. But soon [he declared] that the executions had hardly begun, that freedom’s enemies are all around and that vice was triumphant, and that the country was in peril.
Written in 1936, it’s not hard to cipher what new cult of personality Gombrich has in purview in writing this lesson plan for young readers. It is hard to imagine any book specifically for children written today would address the irrational aspects of the human story in such a direct way.
It seems so long ago, the events Gombrich describes.  But only in February 2011, amidst similar excesses and cries of freedom and justice and the dawn of democracy, a woman reporter is raped by mobs. Crowds riot in Syria, and bands of faceless rebels are the beneficiaries of Western military assistance because, we can only assume, they care about liberty.  But who knows? In the photographs, they look a lot like mobs throughout history.

Gombrich stood at the beginning of a new generation of historians who knew that all history is the history of working things out.  ”Religion” has been a constant source of distress.  But on the occasions when it has been outlawed–as in the Reign of Terror or the communist revolutions of the twentieth century–the secular options have not been inspiring. The will of God and the rejection of God have led to the same results.
It tells us on the one hand that God — or a God who could be anything like a loving and merciful father — is either nonexistent or completely immoral.  And it tells us on the other that whichever is the case, we are still stuck with the “passional tendencies” that keep history from moving in a straight line, divisible by periods, or equal in moral intelligence to its technological successes.
FOOTNOTE:  I am not sure that genius runs in families, but look at the root of the word genius.
Ernst Gombrich and his distinguished pianist-wife Ilse, had only one child, Richard Gombrich.  One of the nicest as well as finest scholars Oxford has ever had the good sense to keep, Richard Gombrich retired from full-time teaching in 2004 on mandatory retirement.  The most prominent Indologist since Max Müller , Gombrich is also a strong critic of contemporary trends in British higher education.
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Published: April 30, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: crowds : E H Gombrich : Egypt : handrape : history : Islamic extremism : Karl Popper : mobs : positivism : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : science ..
7 Responses to “A Little History: E.H. Gombrich”

.
 s. wallerstein 
 April 30, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Mobs are fearsome and unthinking.
Still, it takes a mob to storm the Bastille and it took storming the Bastille to end feudalism in France (and the rest of Europe, except Russia), to write the first declaration of the rights of man, to emancipate the Jews, all the work of the French Revolution.
The American Revolution is the aftermath of the bloody English Revolution and Civil War of the 17th century.
 That is, you Anglo-Saxons had your own violent insurrection, your own king beheaded.
Here’s Mao Zedong: “A revolution is not a dinner party or writing an essay or painting a picture or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another”.
I prefer writing essays myself, and crowds, be they revolutionary or not, frighten me, but it makes sense that when people who have been oppressed, silenced and screwed for centuries finally explode, their inner and expressed violence breaks all the canons of polite everyday morality.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 April 30, 2011 at 8:49 pm
Hi Sam, yes, I agree: the point, I think is not that There Will Be Crowds and sometimes they will behave like mobs as that historically not every movement for change is a movement for good. It is easy to manipulate crowds but very hard to calm them down until irreversible things have been done. They are especially hard to fathom when you rate them on a scale of social change and development. Compare, e.g., the results of the French revolution to the results of the (relatively democratic, anti authoritarian and peaceful) Iranian revolution of 1979.
Reply

 s. wallerstein 
 April 30, 2011 at 9:11 pm
The French revolution (and its crowds) may well be a freak in that it had “positive” or “progressive” results, but since France is the “center” of the universe (or was until New York took its place), most of us see mass movements from the perspective of the storming of the Bastille, not from Tehran, 1979 or that of the crowd or mob which condemned Socrates back in democratic Athens or of the Roman mob or of the mob which chose Barrabas over Jesus.
Much of our historical mythology comes from the French Revolution, for example, the division of politics into “left” and “right”, a mythology further ratified by Marx who took the French Revolution as the model for historical change (as did almost the whole European 19th century), and that distorts our thinking, as you point out.
It would be entertaining to take Tehran, 1979 as our prototypical mass revolution.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 1, 2011 at 10:25 am
Thank Sam, agree with all points. France, an example of a secular revolution that went violent quickly (but at a time when divine right was still asserted so God had to go along with the king), Tehran a violent revolution that went peaceful, returning a theocrat to power and God along with him. Roar of the greasepaint?

 
 
 
 steph 
 April 30, 2011 at 11:35 pm
It’s ironic don’t you think, that despite allegory and style, this is one of the more interesting posts… it’s all the fascinating details, connections, associations and analysis, right down to the footnote. It’s history.
I’ve never liked crowds and crave my wide open spaces. And movements restrict individuality and independence. Prefer swimming and running to team sports… I’ve just read it again to absorb all those details – just spotted Diocetian’s predecesors (sic) and American indpendence (sic). Tippos not important and obviously not distracting.
Reply
 
 s. wallerstein 
 May 1, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Behind the New Atheist narrative is a very innocent depiction of the French Revolution: the overthrow of religion == the overthrow of tyranny and the
 beginning of the Rule of Reason.
Reply
 
 Riddling the Sphinx: Egypt 2011 (via The New Oxonian) « The New Oxonian says:
 May 8, 2011 at 10:02 am
[...] twelve, or longer needs to go–to make peaceful change (like what’s now happening in Egypt) [...]
Reply
 

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Religion and Culture for the Intellectually Impatient


Is “Beyond Belief” Beyond Critique?
by rjosephhoffmann

I don’t know Tristan Vick, the blogmeister at Advocatus Atheist, but I think I like him.
Back in April, when I wrote a series of articles criticizing New Atheism for being loud and obnoxious, Tristan said I was being loud and obnoxious and to put a lid on it.  I was being so persistently obnoxious, in fact, that if I’d replied to the article then I would have been even louder.  So I’m glad I waited. Time’s a healer.

Tristan points out:

“Obviously Hoffmann doesn’t know anything about the education of the New Atheists. Sam Harris is a philosopher turned Neuroscientist, and holds a PhD in modern Neuroscience from UCLA. Richard Dawkins is a world renowned evolutionary biologist and he was the University of Oxford’s Professor for the Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Christopher Hitchens is an infamous atheist intellectual, a savvy journalist, and graduated from Oxford University. Meanwhile, Hoffman groups other atheists into this ‘unlearned’ category when he adds the abbreviation for and company (i.e., et al.) to his list of passionately despised New Atheists. So I can only assume he means other “uneducated” men like Dan Dennett (Philosopher, PhD), Victor Stenger (Physicist, PhD), Richard Carrier (Historian, PhD), David Eller (Anthropologist, PhD) among plenty of others. For the life of me I cannot seem to figure out how these men reflect the unlearned and unreflective side of New Atheism.”
Well, obviously I know (have always known) all of this, and leaving to one side whether credentials insulate you from being a jerk on occasion (it hasn’t helped me) a couple of other things need correction rather than apology.

The last 18th century wit?
First, I don’t passionately despise anyone–least of all any of the people in the paragraph above.   I hugely admire what every single one of them has done in their academic discipline–from Richard Dawkins bringing science into public consciousness to Christopher Hitchens’s sometimes lone crusade for sanity in the world of politics.
I cannot think of a single person mentioned whose scholarship should be impugned or their credentials questioned in their speciality.  And I am very grateful that Tristan knows and likes some of what I have written in the field of biblical criticism–which he’s obviously into in an impressive way.
The question really is whether when they (or yours truly) speak as atheists they deserve immunity from criticism, since there is not (yet) a professional qualification in the field that would entitle anyone to speak with greater authority on the subject than anyone else–not someone whose field is evolutionary biology, not someone whose field is anthropology, not someone working as a journalist.   Naturally a good knowledge base, like a second Pinot Grigio at lunch, is nice to have, but when we speak about atheism, we’re all amateurs.  If some atheists admire certain people as spokesmen because they’re “raw and rude” (I think I’m quoting PZ on how young people like it), there are others who like it medium-well and slightly tenderized.  You can substitute Chinese-food metaphors here if you like.

That fundamental point is already implicit in the discussion.  I’m guessing that Dr Coyne and Dr Myers don’t bring the language of the blogosphere with them to professional meetings. I don’t either.  One of the joys of blogging about things we’re all equally amateurs in is that we can release the verbal energy diffusely that we can’t use on colleagues directly.  You might want to tell old Dr Jenkins that as contributions to science his papers might just as well have appeared in the Norton Anthology of Poetry, but you won’t say that to his despicable face.  That’s why it’s nice to have a cause you believe in–a mission– and a space to share it with people whose offices aren’t next door. Blogs make us prophets in small kingdoms.  But they still don’t make us experts. Popular atheists shouldn’t mind developing fan clubs and cohorts.  But fan clubs and cohorts should be careful about turning their enthusiasm for good ideas and sexy styles into appeals to authority.  I myself am working on a sexy style.
Without any backup for this, I’d guess that 80% of the best academics at the best colleges and universities embrace some form of unbelief and keep it to themselves.  And besides this, scholarship in most humanistic disciplines (including the study of religion) is implicitly atheistic–everything from history to philosophy to literature.  There’s no room for “supernaturalism”–and that includes God theories–in public or most good private universities. That battle has been won in methodology, if not in the classroom.  If you don’t believe me, try getting an article published in a peer-reviewed journal by arguing that Joan of Arc’s visions were real.

The larger, discussable, popular atheism that seeps out of the academy in the form of books, lecture tours, debates and blogs (no, I’m not saying it all originates there; but Tristan’s list suggests that it is a major pipeline for discussion and feeds into a thousand internet channels) isn’t subject to the same kind  of “peer review” that scholars expect when they are speaking or writing as professionals and experts in their field. That’s what makes the “raw and rude” atheism of the blogosphere different from the assumed and methodological atheism of the academy–even though the two forms aren’t opposed and not really in conflict–except as to tenor and style.
Unfortunately, the people-part of popular atheism won’t always cotton to the sometimes elitist-feeling, genteel-seeming atheism of the marble halls.  Ask anybody in the list above who has been in full-time academic employment and climbed the tenure ladder about the process: the answer will be roughly the same. No professor would last very long if she mimicked or abused the religious sentiments of a religious devotee during a classroom discussion–no matter how strongly she’s convinced that education means, among other things, getting over it.  When I see atheist comrades being a little too–how you say in your language–robust in this matter once freed from the shackles of classroom teaching, I have to admit my discomfort.  Easy enough at this point to let sparks fly: I seem deficient in my commitment to the truth. (As in Hoffmann coddles believers).  And my plainspoken colleague seems deficient in kindness and generosity.  But can’t we have, or try to have, both?
Within the last five years I was asked directly by a [here nameless] department chair (and I quote) “How does your atheism affect your teaching of history.”  I responded somewhat pointedly that if he had asked that question of a Catholic or a gay I would report it to the dean, but as it was about atheism I would let it ride.  He was curious, so I said, “Because even though there is no God,  he has played an enormous role in human history.” (He found it amusing.)

Toynbee
Does the fact that in popular atheism ideas are thrown onto the battlefield and caught in a crossfire mean that there should be no review or critique of what atheists say at all?  That doesn’t seem likely, does it? There has to be review, there will always be criticism.
But that doesn’t mean that atheists should leep quiet about each other when they find members of the home-side bending the rules of healthy discourse. That includes me. It needs to be said that not all outrageous statements, even if they’re funny, benefit atheism. And I think name-calling and petulance hurts all of us.  In saying this, I hope for agreement, not a dozen replies that begin “See, Hoffmann is learning.  There is still hope.”
Once upon a time, a guy could get excommunicated from the Church for calling a preist a bastard, even if the priest was one.  In some states (believe it or not) it is still a tort (libel per se, or something equally preposterous) to speak ill of (cough) a lawyer.  Academics have never enjoyed such privilege.  That’s a good thing, as long as we keep the discussion at the level of ideas.  Unlike priests and  lawyers, there is nothing sacred about being an academic, despite the fact some academics would like there to be.

So here’s the deal.  As long as we’re clear that academic credentials confer no privilege or special dignity in a discussion–a conversation that has to be democratic, no matter how close to the earth we walk–I completely agree that calling people “superjerks” is out of bounds.  We need to develop language that shows the big old largely religious world that atheism isn’t coming apart at the seams.  Again.  Tristan says,

“Criticizing atheism, mind you, is a good thing. It helps us persistent, loud mouthed, fundamental atheist types check our arguments and hone, refine, and improve them. Criticism only seeks to make us stronger critical thinkers. We can learn from positive as well as negative criticism, and criticism allows us the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, perchance to grow better and learn to reason better. But Hoffmann isn’t offering advice; he’s being a dick.”
Can’t say I love being a dick, but I do love what he says about criticism. The worst thing unbelievers can do is split up into grumbling factions of science-atheists, humanities-atheists, and social science-atheists (talk about dicks: just kidding) to see whose atheism is the purest form of the product.  I think keeping the discussion going, even if it occasionally roils into disagreement and criticism, is better than sulking or going it alone. There’s a lot we have to talk about to each other in a world that winks at the grief caused by religious devotion but scorns the wisdom that unbelief represents.
So Tristan: while I can apologize for being a dick,  I can’t apologize for being critical, and don’t think you’d want me to.  When I am all grumbly and obnoxious, I really don’t mind your telling me.
We all need to get to know each other’s ideas a little better.
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Published: May 8, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Advocatus Atheist : atheism : Christopher Hitchens : humanism : new atheism : new atheist criticism : Oxford : P Z Myers : religion : Richard Dawkins ..
20 Responses to “Is “Beyond Belief” Beyond Critique?”

.
 s. wallerstein 
 May 8, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Actually, from what I’ve seen, you turn obnoxious grumbling into a virtue.
Hitch, the greatest wit since Johnson?
Oscar Wilde?
Bertrand Russell?
Nietzsche
Hitchens is witty, but goes for the cheap shot too often to be in the all-time pantheon of wit.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 8, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Hi Sam, yes. Actually, Johnson wasn’t a witty as Wilde. But Hitch can be witty; he sharpens it. But I’ve also said that he’s the last 18th century man, and that too many American new atheists want to “be” like him and for all kinds of reasons fail miserably to achieve anything resembling his Oxford junior common room style.
Reply

 steph 
 May 8, 2011 at 8:13 pm
I think there’s a bit more of Wilde in the garnish here, and Evelyn Waugh too. But Hitch might be a little bit Jonathon Swift. He too had a brilliantly sharp wit and an eye for satire, and lingered in the same halls three centuries before.

 
 
 
 steph 
 May 8, 2011 at 6:41 pm
I’d describe the critique posted here as a bubbling crock pot of Groucho Marx, George Bernard Shaw with a good dollop of Falstaff as well. It always serves up the flavour of good taste.
Reply
 
 s. wallerstein 
 May 8, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Steph is right to add Groucho Marx to the list, and how about Woody Allen?
Yes, Dr. Hoffmann, Hitch does outclass all the other new atheists. His wit is very British. I tried reading God is not Great in Spanish translation, a public library book, and his humor did not translate well.
Reply
 
 SocraticGadfly 
 May 9, 2011 at 1:04 am
In the case of Harris, I have no problem critiquing his credentials, either. The IMmoral Landscape seems to indicate his philosophy PhD diploma is worth little more than crapper paper.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 9, 2011 at 8:45 am
Re Harris. His case sort of illustrates the inappropriate authority or credentials worship I’m talking about. he had no special reputation as a “neuroscientist” and as far as I know has never held a university appointment in the field. That doesn’t undermine him, but it does make one wonder (therefore) why being a neuroscientist has anything to do with what kind of wisdom he possesses when he writes atheist polemic, as in the End of Faith, or not very satisfying speculation about morality, as in the Moral Landscape, which has been roundly listed as a failure by both scientists and ethicists. The same with Richard Carrier, who is a bright guy–but that, not a PhD, should be enough to carry him [no pun intended].
Reply

 Tristan D. Vick 
 May 10, 2011 at 4:06 am
In the case of Sam Harris, I think a lot of confusion is due to the fact that he doesn’t articulate everything he’s thinking–or that is related to the field. Other neuroscientists have done a better job of it, I think.
Steven Novella for example.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/atheism-and-morality-jon-topping-responds/#more-2884

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 8:23 am
Right, and not every book by an atheist new or old is a home run. Maybe the first order of business is to squash the myth that there are differences of “content” or message (as opposed to style) between the two.

 
 
 
 s. wallerstein 
 May 9, 2011 at 12:05 pm
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/04/philosophy-of-lying-truth-ian-leslie/
Here is an article by Julian Baggini, in which he states that his method is not so much to proclaim the
 Truth, but to stimulate the discussion of certain issues, which at times involves pointing out the virtues of religion to atheists, etc.
I believe that you (Hoffmann) use the same method and that the New Atheists simply do not understand that.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 9, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Thanks; yes, Julian and are on the same page and on the same hit list with the News, I’m afraid.
Reply

 Ophelia Benson 
 May 11, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Is that fair? Given that you’ve admitted (if I understand you correctly, and I think I do) that you were being “loud and obn…..” about “the News”? Couldn’t that be why you’re on the putative hit list, if indeed you are on any such list?
I don’t think “new atheists” demand any immunity from criticism. I don’t know of any who do. What I and other tenth-level “news” dislike is wild exaggeration and generalization like that of Jacques Berlinerblau.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 11, 2011 at 12:49 pm
I think I was for a spell. I don’t think I am any longer. My new leaf commitment is to be at least and more indulgent of the sins of the atheist tribe as I am of foolish religionists. There are so many fewer of us. In fact, I’m going to blog about it soonish.

 
 Ophelia Benson 
 May 11, 2011 at 12:57 pm
So you’re off the list then. It’s not true (pace s wallerstein) that the New Atheists Don’t Understand. The new atheists understand Everything.

 
 s. wallerstein 
 May 11, 2011 at 2:12 pm
This is a historical moment, like the fall of the Berlin Wall.

 
 
 
 Tristan D. Vick 
 May 10, 2011 at 2:24 am
Thank you Mr. Hoffmann, sir. I appreciate you taking the time to engage me.
I guess I will reply here first and then do a copy and paste to your
 blog. I would do it the other way around except today I am out of
 town and only have my Kindle to send a reply on a poor wireless
 connection with.
The part where you said “Blogs make us prophets in small kingdoms” is
 entirely true. It makes me wonder how much of blogging (and writing
 critical exposes in general) is simply rhetoric aimed at maintaining
 the the kingdoms of our own devising, and how much is genuine concern
 and due criticism.
Which is to say, although agree criticism is necessary, sometimes
 the rhetoric can run away with us and get out of control. Rhetoric
 gone wild, you might say.
Perhaps my language was not as tempered as it should have been in
 calling you a dick, but in my defense, we all have our ‘dickish’
moments.
I hope you understand that comment was specifically in regard to your
 having singled out PZ Myers for the fourth or fifth consecutive time,
 not just in one article either. At the time it seemed that you were
 only offering criticism of this one particular atheist thinker and no
 others, on top of grouping all the other outspoken New Atheists
 together with him, lending to the skewed view that this is what
 all atheists must think.
In addition, it appears your rhetoric may have gone wild, when you
 threw out that childish ad hominem that PZ was a “Super jerk.” Such
 playground talk seemed, to me, less like a proper criticism and more
 like a critical attack on someone’s character.
Whether or not it was provoked, or deserved, it just seemed to be a
 little bit dickish. But perhaps what shocked me even more was the
 implication that we needed it pointed out to us. Oh, that crazy PZ is
 so over the top, and he is being a jerk again, I mean, super jerk.
I could be entirely off on this, but it seemed like you were saying
 (implying) that any fan of PZ was in the same league of ‘jerkiness’.
Perhaps it was the earlier usage of the et al. (and others) which
 threw me off. It felt like, since you were grouping all New Atheists
 together anyway, and coming off the negativity of previous New Atheist
 criticism, that you were implying all New Atheists were a little bit
 jerky (at least the so-called “uneducated” jerks who hang on every
 word of their overlord blog king, the so-called Super jerk).
Although I consider myself part of the New Atheist movement, and am a
 fan of PZ, nonetheless, I go out of my way to try not to be an
 uneducated jerk and mindless follower. Which is why I thought some of
 your comments were unwarranted (at least overly stereotypical),
 therefore I felt apologies were in order.
I hope that clarifies and explains the whole “dick debacle.”
Admittedly, I may have let the rhetorical situation run away too, and I probably was more derisive than critical. I hope we can open up a discourse free of our egos and perhaps talk more personally about the greater atheistic concerns, and challenges, facing us. Which I feel we are both attempting, to the best of our abilities.
Reply
 
 Tristan D. Vick 
 May 10, 2011 at 3:57 am
[I hope this one is a little bit easier to read]
Thank you Mr. Hoffmann, sir. I appreciate you taking the time to engage me.
I guess I will reply here first and then do a copy and paste to your blog. I would do it the other way around except today I am out of town and only have my Kindle to send a reply on a poor wireless connection with.
The part where you said “Blogs make us prophets in small kingdoms” is entirely true. It makes me wonder how much of blogging (and writing critical exposes in general) is simply rhetoric aimed at maintaining the the kingdoms of our own devising, and how much is genuine concern and due criticism.
Which is to say, although agree criticism is necessary, sometimes the rhetoric can run away with us and get out of control. Rhetoric gone wild, you might say.
Perhaps my language was not as tempered as it should have been in calling you a dick, but in my defense, we all have our ‘dickish’ moments.
I hope you understand that comment was specifically in regard to your having singled out PZ Myers for the fourth or fifth consecutive time, not just in one article either. At the time it seemed that you were only offering criticism of this one particular atheist thinker and no others, on top of grouping all the other outspoken New Atheists together with him, lending to the skewed view that this is what all atheists must think.
In addition, it appears your rhetoric may have gone wild, when you threw out that childish ad hominem that PZ was a “Super jerk.” Such playground talk seemed, to me, less like a proper criticism and more like a critical attack on someone’s character.
Whether or not it was provoked, or deserved, it just seemed to be a little bit dickish. But perhaps what shocked me even more was the implication that we needed it pointed out to us. Oh, that crazy PZ is so over the top, and he is being a jerk again, I mean, super jerk.
I could be entirely off on this, but it seemed like you were saying (implying) that any fan of PZ was in the same league of ‘jerkiness’.
Perhaps it was the earlier usage of the et al. (and others) which threw me off. It felt like, since you were grouping all New Atheists together anyway, and coming off the negativity of previous New Atheist criticism, that you were implying all New Atheists were a little bit jerky (at least the so-called “uneducated” jerks who hang on every word of their overlord blog king, the so-called Super jerk).
Although I consider myself part of the New Atheist movement, and am a fan of PZ, nonetheless, I go out of my way to try not to be an uneducated jerk and mindless follower. Which is why I thought some of your comments were unwarranted (at least overly stereotypical),
 therefore I felt apologies were in order.
I hope that clarifies and explains the whole “dick debacle.”
Admittedly, I may have let the rhetorical situation run away too, and I probably was more derisive than critical. I hope we can open up a discourse free of our egos and perhaps talk more personally about the greater atheistic concerns, and challenges, facing us. Which I feel we are both attempting, to the best of our abilities.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 6:24 am
Thanks Tristan; I’m going to blog about this today or tomorrow.
Reply
 
 
 Is “Beyond Belief” Beyond Critique? « Religion And More… says:
 May 11, 2011 at 5:14 am
[...]  I don’t know Tristan Vick, the blogmeister at Advocatus Atheist, but I think I like him. Back in April, when I wrote a series of articles criticizing New Atheism for being loud and obnoxious, Tristan said I was being loud and obnoxious and to put a lid on it.  I was being so persistently obnoxious, in fact, that if I’d replied to the article then I would have been even louder.  So I’m glad I waited. Time’s a healer. Tristan points out: “Obviously … Read More [...]
Reply
 
 Karla McLaren 
 May 11, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Dear Joseph,
I love the self-awareness you have, and your humor makes me fall out of my chair. I know you’re grieving right now, but I want to tell you how much I respect your willingness to lower the sharp, sharp stiletto of your wit (in this instance; I command you to use it elsewhere). It’s excellent mentoring, and I thank you for it!
Reply
 

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What Arab Spring?
by rjosephhoffmann

I’ve just read a WSJ interview by James Taranto with (who else)  Paul Wolfowitz–”Wolfie” to his friends. That’s right, the guy who had the distinction of working under two Bush’s and two US defense secretaries–Dick Cheney (under George I) and Donald Rumsfeld (under George II) is now looking for a spotlight and a microphone.

Presumably his two disastrous stints in government, the ones that brought us au cours  the beginnings of the Iraq conflict under H.W. and everything else under W. (including a strategy for “finishing what we started”) gives him the right to be quoted.  That’s why Cheney and his elves are making the talk show rounds, trying to find enough crumbs of recognition to make a real piece of pie before the Democrats take it all.
In the interview, Wolfowitz claims that Obama missed the clear signals of the Arab spring. If you missed it too, this is the period that lasted for 28 days in March and April of 2011 before turning into just another sandstorm.
Unable to lecture on the “War of Terror” in the light of last week’s killing of Osama bin Laden, Wolfowitz thinks this is credible change of topic, a technique he perfected in  his attempts to convince a sleepy and perpetually dumb American electorate that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were really co-conspirators in 9-11, maybe even the same “tearist.”

“Egypt we just bungled completely,” he adds. “I mean, our position was always three days behind whatever was actually going on.” As for Syria, “we’ve failed under both [the Bush and Obama] administrations to recognize how hostile [Bashar] Assad is to everything we want to accomplish in that region,” even when Assad backed foreign fighters killing American soldiers in Iraq. “Now he’s clearly declared himself as an enemy of his own people. At the very least, symbolism matters, and the symbolism of leaving an American ambassador in Damascus. . . . He should have been out a long time ago.  Then there’s Libya…”
Here’s a radical thought.  The reason the United States has not reacted decisively to the Arab Spring is because there isn’t one.  There are only disaggregated movements that can’t be put together into any coherent pattern.     There is instability.  There is agitation. There is unrest and dissatisfaction.  But Peter Cottontail and American style democracy are not waiting to hop on stage.
No one knows what the Egyptians are after beyond wanting–having wanted–regime change (which btw Wolfowitz and his bosses were notoriously poor in providing once the dust of invasions had settled). We now know that even during the headiest moments of the “pro-democracy” gatherings in Tahrir Square, 300 demonstrators were hand raping an American reporter in full view of the crowds.  It just doesn’t have that Lexington and Concord feel, does it?

The latest news out of Egypt suggests that before elections are held, the army will act like any army and rule with its boots when areas of conflict threaten public peace.  When they don’t want to intervene, they won’t.
That’s what’s happening right now with Coptic Christians and Muslims, over what might have been a minor incident under Mubarak. The violence started with rumours that a Christian woman who had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim had been abducted and was being held in a Coptic church. Crowds of Muslims marched to the church and hundreds of Christians gathered to defend it. So far, six people on each side have been killed.
Protective of its numbers, the Copts are hated by the conservative Salafi movement who as recently as last month paraded through sections of Cairo waving placards of Osama bin Laden. (This despite Mr Wolfowitz’s express statement:  ”I don’t know of a single instance of these Arab freedom fighters holding up pictures of bin Laden. I know many instances of them displaying American flags in Benghazi or painting ‘Facebook’ on their foreheads in Cairo.”  It is good that Mr Wolfowitz’s current remit doesn’t require him to review events on the ground.

On the ground reports are grim, and almost all agree that  300,000 protesters plus one swallow doesn’t make a spring:

“…Increasing hostility toward Egypt’s Coptic Christians over the past few months has met with little interference from the country’s military rulers…. Salafis have been blamed for other recent attacks on Christians and others they don’t approve of. In one attack, a Christian man had an ear cut off for renting an apartment to a Muslim woman suspected of involvement in prostitution.”
Looking at the total situatiion, Justice Minister Abdel Aziz al-Gind says that “Egypt has already become a nation in danger.”  What would Wolfie have done that wasn’t done? Invade Tunisia?
Putting Wolfowitz’s Egypt to one side, has spring really arrived in Libya? Or would it be fairer to say that no one knows what the end game is, what the prize is, who the rebels are, or why the United States, France and NATO decided on this as a cause célèbre. Has Obama’s circumspection (France taking the lead in a military operation, Printemps en effet!) been just another case of the “tone deafness” his critics accused him of, until April 30th.  Or is it an expression of something more rare? Brains, for example.
Sure, Muammar Gaddafi is despicable.  But he has been despicable for forty plus years (he came to power in 1969).  He was despicable when he acquiesced in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.  When he ordered the assassination of his enemies abroad. When he bombed discotheques in Berlin.

As to the rebels, the story used to be that what began as peaceful protests erupted into violence when Gaddafi got tough.  The rebels had no choice but to fight back.  The reality is that there has been a steady stream of Muslims from Somalia and other African states into Benghazi (filling a vacuum created by the removal of all government offices to Tripoli) and that the fastest growing sect in the region (known more familiarly as “the rebel stronghold”) is Salafism, which is at the root of conflict in Somalia as well as in Cairo.
We also know that in recent months the rebels have been studying western media, jotting down buzz-words that European leaders like to see in press releases–words like, freedom, equality, democracy, peaceful change–those sorts of words.  Rather than being caught in a doomed situation, where anti-American and anti-Western extremists are certainly among the fighters the allies have now promised to protect, Obama played the steady hand of minimizing US involvement.  It’s just what he should have done.  But it is intriguing to wonder, What would Wolfie do?

Inspirational sermon by Salafi Muslim, Zarqa (Jordan), April 15
Gaddafi has been able to get by with murder by paying his way back to respectability to the tune of a 3 billion-dollar compensation package to be used to compensate relatives of the Lockerbie bombing victims and assorted other casualties of attacks on American citizens.  Who approved it? Who was the broker? Paul Wolfowitz’s boss. George W. Bush, in tribute,  signed an Executive Order (13477) restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing all of the pending compensation cases. The man who said he would “get” bin Laden dead or alive and then immediately lost track of him, was all about forgive and forget when oil was involved.
Does this mean that if only bin Laden had had the sense to negotiate, his sins could have been forgiven for a cool trillion?  We will never know because George W. Bush was no longer dealing, and Wolfie had moved on to the American Enterprise Institute to defend his failed ideas for a safer, stronger all-American world.
After praising Morocco (where spring supposedly began, and not typical of anything that has happened since) Wolfowitz says that Obama “bungled” the stirrings of democratic rebellion in Iran and has been slow to capitalize on what’s unfolding in Syria: “Now [Assad's] clearly declared himself as an enemy of his own people. At the very least, symbolism matters, and the symbolism of leaving an American ambassador in Damascus. . . . He should have been out a long time ago.”
Perhaps he should have been out when he presided over the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister and a liberal-reformer by Lebanese standards, during the presidency of George W. Bush in 2005.  The assistant defense secretary who looked on in astonishment and without recourse to any plan when Hariri was blown to bits outside the St George’s Hotel in Beirut was Paul Wolfowitz.

Two years earlier, in 2003, Wolfowitz’s superior, Donald Rumsfeld asked, “Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?” According to reports, Wolfowitz claimed that Iraq was a “brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily—it was doable.”  While Wolfowitz states his skepticism about interventions in the WSJ article, his reputation belies any such caution:  In the famous Seymour Hersh exposé (“Donald Rumsfeld Has His Own Special Sources. Are they reliable?” The New Yorker, May 12, 2003) Wolfowitz is depicted as being the cowboy who viewed Afghanistan as swamp and Iraq as the way to get public attention off the losing campaign to find bin Laden. “There’s no way to go too fast. Faster is better.”
According to Hersh, “little effort to provide the military and economic resources” necessary for reconstruction was made.”  What Wolfie cared about was making the case for weapons of mass destruction and convincing the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States that that America was committed to the defense of Israel at all costs–whatever unraveled as a consequence of imprudent action.
Barack Obama was famous before he became famous as the fastest gun in Abbottobad for calling Paul Wolfowitz an ideologue. Some insults just can’t be forgiven. Now that the surgical strike that should have happened ten years ago has happened, the lean and hungry Republicans are circling, growling that torture works, sneering that we were right to go into Iraq (Q: “Who would argue that the world isn’t better off without Saddam Hussein?”A: “Many of the mothers who lost children–4000 before Mission Accomplished and about the same number, under Bush, since.”) and that no matter what people think of Obama today, he’ll be proved a bungler tomorrow.  This is the message of hope being preached by survivors of the last administration.
And it’s got to be true: Just look at how he’s missing all these clues about springtime in Arabia.
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Published: May 9, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Barack Obama : Osama bin Laden : Wall Street Journal : Paul Wolfowitz : Rafiq Hariri : Salafism : Cairo : Arab Spring : radical Islam : Wahhabism : James Taranto : Muammar Gaddafi ..
 
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Atheism and Altruism
by rjosephhoffmann

No predator ever survived by altruism.  No lioness has ever fed her cubs by taking the feelings of the wildebeest into account–never stopped to think, “She may be a mother, too.”

We’re predators, by evolution.  Our eyes are on the front of our faces and we can run long distances and throw things at whatever we can’t outrun. In some areas, we’ve become soft–our canines are almost useless for killing and serious tearing, but we’ve learned to chop and cook our food as a compromise.  Still, we’re predators.  We chase things that run, things that have brains, and we eat them.  I say this with all respect to my vegetarian friends.  And I fully agree, it’s nicer not to have to chase green beans and potatoes around the garden.  This is just the way things have evolved.  God did not make it this way.
Why that preface?  Because one of the things we have stopped doing is eating each other.  As far back as the time of Hobbes, social theorists reckoned that once upon a time when the food supply was short, we would settle for a member of the tribe across the river.  Hobbes called it, without any special reference to cannibalism, “the war of all against all.”

Freud believed that the primal horde was engaged in ritual people-eating from the start, beginning with sons feasting on the father as soon as the patriarch showed signs of loosening his grip on the clan.  Whether Freud (or any later theory) is right, we know that both early religion and early “social contracts” began as taboos against incest and cannibalism.  And we know that the persistence of these ancient customs in the sacrificial systems of early religion and the rationalized forms–in the Christian Eucharist, for example–eating the body and blood of the Lord–is an inadvertent and symbolic admission of the vile things we used to do out of habit and custom.  Every Catholic who takes the ”Body of Christ” into his hands on Sunday is unwittingly confessing his cannibal past.
But unless we’re as far gone as Hannibal Lecter we are predators with a conscience.  Predators who suppress the instinct to kill, except in certain ritualized situations like war.  Even predators who ask questions like “Maybe she has children, too.” There is nothing especially Christian or religious about empathy or compassion.  There is something specifically human about it.
That’s why when I read a story this morning about the Texas senate passing legislation to permit the carrying of concealed weapons on college campuses–a right they’ll derive from the Second Amendment with salt from the First–my first thought was that Texas may be the first state to start the slow march of regression back to the primal horde.
Then I read another article in my inbox.  This one came from “Rational Public Radio,” the media organ of the Objectivist Ayn Rand Institute.
What is irritating about RPR is not its express atheism but what its distinctive form of atheism expresses.  For example after declaring that Christian morality is a slave ethic of subservience and empathy for others, the article proposes a better way:

Now, imagine a world where everyone is selfish. Each man wants to have the best life he can. He wants that in the long run, not just tomorrow. This would motivate everyone to be as productive and industrious as they could. They would go to school to learn valuable skills, they would invest and save for retirement. They wouldn’t violate the rights of anyone else, because they know it can only harm their own life in the long run. Such a world would ensure that everyone is working to maximize their own happiness. The overwhelming majority of them would get it too.  If life on this Earth is all we have, then improving and enjoying our own lives can be our only moral purpose. Without a supernatural god keeping score, man must judge actions as good or evil by how they help him and the people he cares about. Actions must be evaluated on their actual impact. Good intentions do not suffice.  There is no rational basis for altruism, and atheists should reject it. You abandoned god, don’t keep his moral commandments.
The seduction of this proposal is that it does something many “regular” atheists find worthwhile.  The ethics of the Bible are based on rules and customs rooted in the Bronze age.  Many of them are outmoded and some are offensive and illegal– speaking just of the Old Testament. Many of the “exhortations” of the New Testament are impractical;  I will never love my enemies or (at least literally) agree to be insulted (turn my cheek) seventy times seven times–and I don’t see the value in it.

On the other hand, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving comfort to those who hunger for justice and peace strike me as pretty good ideas, no matter where they come from.  I do not regard them as elements of a slave mentality.  I regard them as expressions of the same stirrings of mind and conscience that caused us to crawl out of the mud, stand up straight, and make something of ourselves.
The Objectivists have been fond of identifying Christian ethics (why they don’t see other religious systems as equally problematical I don’t know) as “altruistic,” as exercises in self-denial.

Ayn Rand
If you buy this view, then rejecting altruism, as a vestige of Christan ethics, is logically entailed in not believing in God.  It is immoral to try to embrace “logical and rational thought” and to hold on to the “moral indoctrination of childhood unquestioningly.”

“Why should atheists view altruism as the moral ideal? What scientific or theoretical evidence do you have to support it? Have you really examined the subject thoughtfully, or have you unintentionally kept Christian morality even after you rejected god?….There is a rational alternative. An alternative that actually improves human life on Earth. That alternative is rational self-interest. Selfishness. A word that is a smear to some and a badge of honor to others. Acting in rational self interest is the only morality that makes sense in the absence of a god to command you.”
For most atheists, the advantage of living without God is the freedom to love, choose and reflect without the constraints of rules thought to come from a higher power, a Divine Enforcer.
But unbelief does not logically lead to a new kind of determinism, an anthropology that puts individual self-interest above the social conditions that affect the happiness of others.
The glimmers of moral reflection that make sense in Christianity don’t make sense because they are biblical–since much of biblical morality is simply incomprehensible–but because we can see in the advocacy of love and forgiveness and generosity sentiments that are fully humanistic, even corrective of some of the bloodier and more violent passages of the Old Testament.
The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about God. It tells us what human beings think, or thought, about God.  As a human book, it tells us mainly about us, and  is also an important source for the development of the moral ideas of the species.  Rejecting its “supernatural” authority, unfortunately, can’t diminish its significance as a moral archive.  This is the basic fallacy underlying the Objectivist form of atheist thought.
In fact, Objectivism is strangely inconsistent on this point: it’s the New Testament it hates.  The Old Testament history of Israel, which is largely the history of selfish, territorial schemes against its enemies and persecutors, can only be regarded as objectionable to an Objectivist because it’s related to God. It’s core premises are basically exemplary: What could be less altruistic than the story of the Chosen People pursuing their national self-interest without regard for the life and limb of the Unchosen?  What is less altruistic than the events of the Middle Ages and the mid-Twentieth Century that sought to counter this assumption through the vigorous pursuit of national self interest? Empathy was not involved. Predation was.

Natural self interest
The existence of altruism is a hot  topic, almost as important to some people as the existence of God.  As a soft altruist, I believe that empathy, compassion and generosity are important survival skills that we have arrived at over about 50,000 years or so of the “modern” development of our species, which is about 200,000 years old.  Many anthropologists see the development of religion and law as a coordinate of this modern process–an acknowledgement that our distant ancestors could not usually be counted on to do the socially acceptable thing. The archaeological record supports the theory.

As religion declines, however, in terms of the principles of selection that still operate in the human community, it should be fairly evident that patterns of social adjustment that could once only be expressed religiously (or legally) continue to be expressed because they are socially advantageous.  That is to say, some forms of altruism are rational because they work.  They are conducive to happiness, the thing that both Aristotle and the American founding fathers who read him thought was ultimately important to human beings.  They provide cohesion, structure, and a sense of wellbeing superior to their opposites.
An atheism that is rational in this latter sense will reject the temptation to be swayed by the suggestion that “real” atheism means that we have to be guided by our predator instincts.  That isn’t what brought us out of the mud and made it possible for us to look each other in the eye.

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Published: May 10, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: altruism : atheism : Ayn Rand : evolution : Neanderthal : Objectivism : predator species : rationality : religion : the Bible : theism ..
20 Responses to “Atheism and Altruism”

.
 s. wallerstein 
 May 10, 2011 at 11:11 am
If people don’t feel empathy or compassion for others, there’s not much that one can say to them to convince them to care about others. One can only avoid them as much as possible.
I’m not sure that telling people that it’s “moral” to be altruistic will make those who feel no empathy or compassion more concerned about others.
In fact, I think that the thought of Ayn Rand generally serves as an ideological rationalization or justification for people who in their hearts feel no concern for others.
In favor of the New Atheists, none of those whom I’m familiar with buys into Ayn Rand. Even those who are most ferocious with us soft Atheists are in favor of compassion towards those who suffer or have not done well in this often cruel world.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 11:49 am
Yes i agree-I don’t think any of the leading lights among the Gnu are Randists. They’ve always had a bone to pick with other atheists and humanists.
Reply
 
 
 Ophelia Benson 
 May 10, 2011 at 11:55 am
Boy, they certainly helped themselves to one very easy “because.”
“They wouldn’t violate the rights of anyone else, because they know it can only harm their own life in the long run.”
Oh really! It’s that easy, is it?
Give me a f***ing break.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 11:57 am
They used to send delegations to CFI events to “picket” and try to ask embarrassing questions. For some reason, like Mormons, they always wore ties. And sold books.
Reply

 Ophelia Benson 
 May 10, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Kind of like Westboro Baptist then. How fitting.

 
 
 
 ken 
 May 10, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Um. What is this “self” which pursues “self-interest”? Just wondering….
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Maybe it’s the same as the me in meme ;) — a twofer
Reply

 ken 
 May 10, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Are there any Buddhist Randians?

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 9:23 pm
Lotsa randy Buddhists, though

 
 
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 May 10, 2011 at 2:23 pm
As Woody Allen once said, “The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep.” But, I’m not sure predation is an inhibitor of altruism. The findings of the anthropologists/archeologists are not clear. Some bands of early humans were no doubt quite egalitarian, much like the !Kung tribe of the Serengeti is today; more than willing to share food, shelter and, well, let’s just say “other things” with passers-by. Then there were likely bands that were somewhat less hospitable to outsiders, such as the Jivaro Indians in the upper Amazon valley, known for their expertise in shrinking heads. Or, the Korowai in the western part of New Guinea, who are known for making human flesh taste like chicken, with a hint of Bar-B-Que.
Ir seems to me that what we call altruism emerges only after our primary needs are met; plenty of food and water, shelter, strong family ties, a sense of safety. Some members of such societies, but certainly not all, offer to help others, but not as part of a survival strategy. They are simply predisposed to be do-gooders, Polly Annas, philanthropists. We don’t know for sure, but my guess is that the folks with these sunny goddamned dispositions have been around for at least 200,000 years or so. The motivation for this behavior may be nothing more than that the actors enjoy it, derive pleasure from it. No laws, no rules, no scriptures will change this basic personality trait.
In my opinion, the real problem here is when the concept of property went from communal to proprietary. And that occurred with the age of agriculture; more stuff means more protection, and more protection means law and order and that takes an organization, call it government, to provide. So, now you got your laws, and your rules, and your edicts and your covenants with god. A man’s home became his castle — no trespassing, beware of dog, solicitors will be shot on sight. Today we have college kids carrying guns, concealed guns no less. With all this paranoia, conspiracy theories, retreat from personal responsibility, it’s no wonder altruism is in the crapper.
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse,) in an article that appeared in the May, 1987, issue of Discover magazine, titled “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” makes the point:
“Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it.”
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 7:45 pm
Agriculture is way late in this story.
Reply

 Herb Van Fleet 
 May 11, 2011 at 12:27 pm
I chalk it up to O’Tool’s Law: “Murphy was an optimist”

 
 
 
 John Anngeister 
 May 10, 2011 at 3:06 pm
It looks like your humanistic altruism has a strong family resemblance to rational self-interest, the difference being your meta-narrative, which assigns ultimate wisdom to a different theory of evolutionary success than the Objectivists.
You write: “in terms of the principles of selection that still operate in the human community, it should be fairly evident that patterns of social adjustment that could once only be expressed religiously (or legally) continue to be expressed because they are socially advantageous.”
Meanwhile I think the religious archive suggests that altruism was one of those “stirrings of mind and conscience” that did much more than simply cause us “to crawl out of the mud, stand up straight, and make something of ourselves” (as you imply).
I think the true concept of altruism cannot be meaningfully appropriated to serve any utilitarian ethics – because altruism ought to be reserved as a qualifier of actions in regard to other persons as ends in themselves. This requires not merely a scheme for mutual advancement toward evolutionary success but a concrete element of self-sacrifice of the sort suggested by Jesus, which you call “incomprehensible”.
Thanks again for another thought-provoking study of the humanist-atheist paradox.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 10, 2011 at 6:55 pm
“because altruism ought to be reserved as a qualifier of actions in regard to other persons as ends in themselves.” I agree. But I don’t agree that all of biblical ethics are comprehensible or that everything assigned to Jesus is biblical. I said some of NT ethics are impractical and strongly imply that the NT is corrective and closer to an altruistic ideal.
Reply
 
 
 steph 
 May 10, 2011 at 6:48 pm
A happy selfish person is an oxymoron, unless they don’t have a conscience or genuine friends.
Altruism is not ‘subservience’ to others. It’s about helping, compassion and empathy for others. It’s more about ‘serving’ each other or sharing and caring and kindness. It’s a fundamental human value that has evolved as we have learned to live together in a social world. It has been adopted by religions and sometimes credited to a god idea, but it’s just a natural way of living together without seeking reward.
“Altruism: An idea invented by Auguste Comte in the nineteenth century but anticipated in the ethical teaching of some religions, especially Christianity. Based on the belief that it is possible to intend to “do good” without promise of reward or fear of punishment, the concept properly belongs to evolutionary biology and behaviouralism rather than to theology. As an ethical ideal there is nothing in humanism that makes altruism an inappropriate symbol for personal conduct.” (July 2nd 2010, here)
Perhaps it’s easier in some societies than others, but it’s an effective way to survive and thrive in a social environment. Many people preach it, some people practise and live it and have more fulfilling lives, generally. (And some of us have evolved from chasing things that run, and just pick and eat what we peacefully grow.)
It’s all true. It’s about others.
Reply
 
 Rich Griese 
 May 11, 2011 at 12:45 pm
There I was thinking of kittens and having a wonderful day, and what happens? I come across your article and am horrified to see you talking about the most horrible of all human filth, Ayn Rosenbaum. ayn Rosenbaum, the woman that used to take young lovers and have them poo on her back. This woman that thought herself no better than a human toilet, certainly a creature with horrible self esteem. And you mentioned thei Rosenbaum over and over again, until I could take it no more and had to scream out. GET BEHIND ME SATIN!
Cheers! RichGriese.NET
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 11, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Is satin a fetish?
Reply

 steph 
 May 11, 2011 at 1:31 pm
Smooth and graceful as silk. Satin is so dull on the back. Could cause one to fret.

 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 May 11, 2011 at 1:41 pm
I’m pretty sure Ayn Rand never wore satin.

 
 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 11, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Rich, it isn’t just the late Ms Rosenbaum (pronounced Rand), but the fact that her Institute survives her. I don’t want to think about their training sessions in the light of your disclosures, but it’s also clear that they aren’t budging very much from Mama’s repulsive teachings. What can you do? (He shrugs)
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A Child’s Sister
by rjosephhoffmann

I have just read my sister’s obituary in the Lakeland Ledger.
Five years ago she stood next to me, grasping my hand, as we watched our mother die.  Coward that I am, I was the one holding on for dear life. She was the one who escorted me through the rite, just like she’s done for every member of of my family since I was twelve.  As practical as I’ve come to be about theoretical things that don’t matter, she was always the one who was practical about the things that did.

In 1956 my father and mother piled the family into a Nash Rambler on a hot July day and headed from just south of St Louis to Florida.  None of us had any idea why, except my father and mother, and they weren’t saying.  My sister later told me that it was because we lived in the shadow of a lead smelting factory and that I had developed bronchitis–a disease I assumed had something to do with dinosaurs.   Florida and ocean air are good for the lungs, I was told. It might have been true.  She also told me that the dog I left behind, an English shepherd named Brownie, would track us down as soon as she picked up our scent and be in Florida days after we were settled there.  Though it stopped my crying, it turned out not to be true.
My sister, whose middle name was Sue and thus always Susie to a younger, attention-craving, insufferable brother, sat in the back seat next to me in a car without air conditioning for a trip to a state with water rather than Kansas and Illinois on either side of it.
By the time we got to Fort Myers, our presumed destination and where the Mayflower Van was headed with our worldly goods,  my sore throat had developed into a major childhood illness: the mumps. The cure was rest, Royal Crown Cola, and saltines.  When my mother asked why the cola, the doctor said, in a drawl my father strained to comprehend, “Well, have y’all evah tried eatin’ saltines without it?”
As I baked in a cheap motel room outside Naples, my sister wrote letters home to boyfriends she had thrown over, and in the custom of the day applied white adhesive tape and turquoise blue nail polish to a class ring from her last steady.  Whenever she’d collected more than one ring, she sometimes let me apply the nail polish to a second.  But it was her policy never to remove the tape when the ring was returned.

I will always remember Fort Myers as the place where I ate my first piece of watermelon and  learned what blind mosquitoes (“aqueous midges”) were.  Driving along the west coast with increasingly frazzled parents–neither parent had a job to go to and they were now confronted with a homesick daughter and a whining invalid son–my always abrupt mother announced abruptly that we weren’t staying in Fort Myers and we began a slow trek inland.
As we did, as though by magic, the solid wall of biteless ‘skeeters  began to dissipate from the back inside windscreen and we focused on eating watermelon.  Both of my parents were musicians (of a sort) so we sang, loudly and constantly as we chugged unhappily along.  It was during that unhappy sojourn that I got to be “Bloop” to my sister’s “Bleep” in the Drip Song and the female part in “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Her favorite anthem that hot season was Rosemary Clooney’s version of  ”You’ll Never Know,” which I wasn’t permitted to sing with her.
By the time we hit the depot town of Winter Haven in central Florida, a way station for northern tourists en route by coach from New York to Miami in the old Florida East Coast Railroad, we were out of songs, almost out of cash, and the Nash was coughing badly.  I was feeling better. My sister was feeling worse.  Her homesickness had turned into something real.  She’d caught the mumps.
Winter Haven became home, by default.  It had lakes, and palm trees, lots of nice houses, banyan trees, fresh water swamps, foliage like you never saw in the Midwest,  and loads of alligators.  When I got to be a teenager I resented it being in central Florida and so far away from the coast and would occasionally say as indignantly as I could “Tell me again why we’re not living in Fort Myers.” But the story was always the same.  ”Your sister and you.”
Our mother found a job, then a better one, and ended up teaching at the local Catholic school.  Our father did what he could do.  Probably having escaped Missouri to avoid working for his German father, and after a financially ruinous try at running a restaurant in Haines City,  he ended up working for my mother’s father.  Worse, as we found out, there were blind mosquitoes in Winter Haven too.
After her one and only year in the local high school, my sister went to New Orleans to study nursing.  The Greyhound trip to Louisiana with my father to see her capped was the biggest adventure of my young life, probably the proudest of his.
She married a boy from “back home,” a usual thing to do, and because back home was still Missouri for her, that’s where he was from.  She had two adorable daughters who became little sisters to me, steadfastly refused–even when they were instructed–to call me Uncle Joe, and spent most of their time seeing if they could squeeze into the little area behind the back seat of my 1965 VW beetle.  In biblical terms, they grew in grace and wisdom.

Years went by.  I moved away.  There were the usual growing-apart pains that always seem to separate brothers and sisters who occupy different spaces, miles apart.  By this point she was the young matriarch of a family that had grown up knowing only Florida as their home.  She returned to school, earned a few degrees and became what many people still call a “legendary educator.”  Having known her in Girl Scout berets, Halloween party masks, with Calomime lotion smeared over her “blemishes” (our mother detested the words “pimples” and “belly”) it was hard for me to acknowledge the legendary part. But you can’t argue with the newspapers.

She had grandchildren. In August, 2007, one of them, her only grandson, was savagely murdered by a local gang. The effect of this on her was so horrible that the less said about it the better.  It is better not even to think about it. It’s just a theory, of course, but it was something she never recovered from.
My relationship with my sister was not always easy.  It was my fault that it wasn’t. I went from being a young brat to an older one, but always a brat. I mistook her endless exuberance for immortality, and when I learned she had cancer I thought the cancer didn’t have a chance. She would beat it.  She would outlive me by a decade at least.
But she didn’t.

Now I’m the last member of the homesteading troupe that rumbled into Florida without a destination, frightened, sick, and cash poor–when Dwight Eisenhower was still in the White House, when the drinking-fountains in McCrory’s said “White Only,” and the Mass was still in Latin. There is no one to grasp my hand this time, and to make the kiss of death gentle and soft.  Meeting my sister’s death is like  meeting death with his mask off and knowing for the first time–really–that this is what happens to us one at a time.
There is one more song she loved that long while ago, and I have been humming it all day.  It helps.
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Published: May 11, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: Death : Florida : grief : religion : sisters ..
14 Responses to “A Child’s Sister”

.
 s. wallerstein 
 May 11, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Sorry to hear about your sister, my condolences.
The number of people who mean something to each of us is limited and it always horrible to lose one of them.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 11, 2011 at 5:46 pm
“To philosophize is to learn how to die.”
Reply

 s. wallerstein 
 May 11, 2011 at 5:55 pm
It’s sometimes easier to learn to die oneself than to accept the loss of others who mean something to us.
One’s world gets a bit poorer every time someone who counts departs.
Maybe you know this, but mourning is strange: it hits you slowly because of psychological denial mechanisms. At least that’s my experience and that’s what the psychologists say too.

 
 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 11, 2011 at 6:20 pm
I fully agree; we are only responsible for our own deaths. We die alone–why Hitchens for example has said that after a while the whole idea seem banal. But the death of others–that’s different! I cannot be philosophical about that.

 
 
 steph 
 May 11, 2011 at 8:16 pm
I don’t agree with the psychologists at all Sam. I think humans experience things in different ways. I’ve read the mourning maps – the denial, the anger, the stages of mourning. In my experience it just isn’t true. There was no denial or anger. Just shattering shock, horror, hollowness and emptiness. Just profound grief, horrific loss. Life suddenly seems so small and meaningless. No denial, it’s all too real.
Reply
 
 
 s. wallerstein 
 May 11, 2011 at 8:27 pm
Steph:
As you say, people have different experiences.
I found that I intellectualized my grief at first and then slowly, very slowly, the inner sense of loss began to dawn on me.
It’s probably not the best moment to get into a theoretical discussion about grief, but I did, perhaps tactlessly, bring up the theme first.
Reply
 
 John Anngeister 
 May 11, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Beautiful tribute, Joseph, to your ‘big sister’.
I am a little in awe, and grateful – as your writing here helps to fill a lacuna in my own experience – my sisters being ‘little sisters’ – not to mention all being still alive.
The comment “we die alone” reminded me of a thought I had after my mother had died in a hospital room in one of those scenarios we read about quite commonly these days – “surrounded by her loved ones.” It occurred to me that no matter how many dear faces we see in our last moments, it will always be a lonely experience for the one person in the room who knows he is the only one in the group who has to die on that particular day.
I’m sure you will agree that this kind of alone-ness cannot really be eased by the dying person’s realization that everyone in the room will also eventually die. Nor is the awful singularity any less concrete (I would add) for someone who is supposed to be ‘aided’ by transcendental hopes.
But thank you.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 11, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Thank you John lovely comment.
Reply
 
 
 Jonathan Figdor 
 May 11, 2011 at 11:02 pm
This was a beautiful remembrance. I’m sorry for your loss, Joseph.
Reply
 
 Rob Fisher 
 May 12, 2011 at 3:40 am
Beautiful. Thank you.
Reply
 
 Apuleius Platonicus 
 May 12, 2011 at 7:24 am
This is genuinely beautiful, moving, loving tribute to your sister.
Reply
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 May 12, 2011 at 12:17 pm
My deepest sympathy to you and your family on the loss of your sister. I too have an older sister, my only sibling, and we also drifted apart for many years. But, after my wife died 8 years ago, and my her husband died 5 years ago, and with our parents both gone, we have become thick as thieves. This, in spite of the fact that she’s a Republican and, worse, an Episcopalian. Love conquers all, but sometimes it ain’t so easy.
Although you have already written a beautiful tribute to your sister, something that helped me in my time of grief, and which I’ve read many times since, is a poem that you may already be familiar with. It’s by Mary Frye and was written in 1932.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
 I am not there. I do not sleep.
 I am a thousand winds that blow;
 I am the diamond glints on snow;
 I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
 I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning hush
 I am the quick uplifting rush
 Of quiet birds in circling flight.
 I am the soft star that shines at night.
 Do not stand at my grave and cry.
 I am not there, I did not die.
Reply
 
 Wendy Scott 
 May 12, 2011 at 3:26 pm
The others above have expressed themselves each beautifully in regards the loss of your sister. I lost a beloved brother just over a year ago, so I can empathize with your current and ongoing loss. My deepest sympathies, and my hope that your memories of her will strengthen as does your continued love for her.
 Lost loved ones remain with us forever, which is one of the most wondrous features on this journey called life.
Reply
 
 Graham 
 May 14, 2011 at 2:26 pm
I just wanted to say thank you for writing this; it must have been very difficult. Thank you also to all the other commenters. I am very sorry for your loss.
My father died a year ago. ‘Life suddenly seems so small and meaningless.’ – this seems exactly right. The answer, I think, and the only response to that feeling is that it isn’t: it’s everything. It’s all we have, and it’s as good as we can make it. It’s hard convincing yourself of that sometimes though.
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Of Anachronism
by rjosephhoffmann


Some atheists have proposed that it is possible to be good without God. They’ve plastered the slogan on buses, developed websites, and sold t-shirts to press the point home.  In a minor spin of the same message, other atheists are saying that despite what “religious people” (or often simply “religion”) says, you don’t need God to lead a good and meaningful life.  If the meaning of these slogans is that millions of people find moral value and meaning outside the constraints of religious faith, I agree–wholeheartedly–and I think I am one of them.  I challenge anyone to a duel if they say my love of art, music and literature is deficient; and I will shoot first.

At first flush, these seem like eminently reasonable propositions–as unarguable as Dr Seuss’s assertion in Horton Hears a Who that “a person’s a person no matter how small.” It’s the language of the culture of self-esteem.  And it tells us that, despite anything Dostoevsky might have said a hundred (plus) years ago, it’s the absence of God that makes us all equally worthy; the moral universe does not collapse with his non-existence.
On the contrary, the presence of God, or at least a law-giving god like the biblical god,  creates a value system and a moral hierarchy that modern women and men find unbearable.  There is no universal human equivalence in this God’s world, only saints and sinners, law and law-breaking.  I reject that system as vigorously as do my atheist friends. There can be nothing like a human moral system–a system good for humans–apart from humanity.  Many atheists believe this– and many religious people, even if they don’t, will eventually have to face up to it.
Unfortunately, atheists at this point often try to press their case by cherrypicking the most obscene passages of the Old Testament and raising questions about the mental capacity of people who (they seem to allege) believe the verses still apply. Should parentsLapidation: fun for the whole family be permitted to kill disobedient sons after a cursory inquiry at “the city gates”?  Should fathers be able to sell daughters in slavery?  Is a woman unclean (untouchable) for sixty-six days after the birth of a female child?  Does the definition of rape depend on whether it happens near a city or in the country? Is God so petulant that he needs to destroy a world he could have made better, thus causing his non-omniscient self, not to mention his creatures,  endless trouble?
The relative ease with which these questions can be tossed aside in disdain should clue the reader to the fact that he is not reading an engineering textbook, that he is trodding on unfamiliar, primitive soil.

If you can read this, do what it says...
The script for these objections changes slightly, but the underlying assumption of an unbelief-ful realist doesn’t: The common notion is that if you point out tirelessly what a silly book the bible is people will eventually begin to read it, see the absurdity, and say “Eureka: what an idiot I’ve been.”
I think these Aha! moments actually happen in certain cases, but the great majority of believers really don’t care about the absurdities, and the more “faithful” they are to the traditions of their church, the more they will know that the tribal contexts of Old Testament justice (exception being made for the recent use of lex talionis on bin Laden) don’t form part of the living voice of religious tradition in the twenty first century–just as they haven’t for almost a millennium.
Maybe, as an axiom, unbelievers should flirt with the idea that things that are regarded as anachronistic or irrelevant by the vast majority of religious people are not the best evidence against theism.  That is why, for example, most philosophy of religion anthologies that include a chapter on “Descriptions and Attributes of God” deal with properties and not irrelevances skimmed from the pages of the Bible.
Anachronism is a putative pitfall in constructing any historical argument.  To see how, don’t think Biblical law and custom–Think Hamlet. I remember thinking, the first time I read the play, that all the violence could have been avoided if the young prince had just called the police.  (Never-mind that if that had been an option Shakespeare would not have had a tragedy)  After all, the evidence was all on Hamlet’s side.  Polonius might have testfied. Even Gertrude might have broken down and ratted on Claudius, and Claudius himself was not exactly a bastion of resolve.  Instead, it all ends badly with everyone dead, including Hamlet.  Fortunately I did not offer this solution on my final exam.  It would have been my Paris Hilton moment.

But, no doubt, you’re way ahead of me. Hamlet doesn’t call the police because there weren’t any. Armies, sure, but armies weren’t usually called in to settle domestic spats, not even ones involving murder. Shakespeare wrote the play based (perhaps) on a thirteenth century work by Saxo Grammaticus–when justice was even more primeval and unavailable than in his own day, and where honor, shame and vengeance were largely governed by family honor and local magistrates (judges)–closer therefore to the Bible than to modern practice.  Ultimately, the stories about heirs, usurpers and murder can be traced all the way back to David and Saul, or to Isaac, Esau and Jacob.
When did “crime” become a police (literally, a city) matter and not something to be dealt with in feudal or family fashion? 1822, when Robert Peel founded the London constabulary–a move opposed by many people in London (and it was, at first, just in London) because the city folk didn’t want a government agency getting between them and justice. Objections persevered north of the border in Scotland and in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee in the tradition of clan violence. The first “bobbies” were drawn from the lower ranks of society; many were drunks and bullies–uniformed thugs who meted out justice in strange ways.  When in 1833 Constable Robert Culley was stabbed to death while breaking up an unlawful meeting, a jury acquitted the murderers and a newspaper awarded medals to the jurors. Let’s not even talk about Boston and Chicago in the nineteenth century.

Our sense of justice and the control of crime is a peculiarly modern invention. Yet we’re perfectly willing to accept (without knowing much about its evolution) that things were different–once. We don’t give a second thought to the fact that the meaning of justice has developed along with ways of enforcing and distributing it.  And without getting into the politics of a recent international event, we (many, anyway) don’t really interrogate the sentence ”Justice was done” when clearly what is meant is “Vengeance was exacted.”  The recrudescence of biblical justice in exceptional cases, like poverty, is something we have to expect.

Scales--yes--but the sword is bigger
So I am curious about why the most universally abhorrent and rejected verses in the Bible should become symbolic of the entirety of the biblical world view. Why do we accept gratefully the social evolution of secular justice but deny religion the right to its own conceptual evolution by insisting it must be held accountable for things it produced in the Bronze Age? If evolution is the key to understanding how the world has come to be the way it looks to us, what’s the point in insisting that the religious landscape is unchanging?  I frankly cannot imagine a more tendentious assessment of history than that one.
The fact is, whatever he may or may not have said, you will not find Jesus of Nazareth enjoining the poor to sell their children into slavery to raise some quick cash.  But Hebrew settlers a thousand years before him probably did just that.  You will find him exhorting a rich young man to sell what he has, and give it to the poor, in order to be a worthy disciple. A thousand years before, to the extent that this history is known to us, such advice would have been feckless, almost incomprehensible.  It is similar to my wondering why Hamlet didn’t call the cops on Claudius.
Even the Hebrew Bible shows the slow and deliberate growth of a moral conscience over its millennium-long development: Like any idea that lasts longer than a day, God evolves:

This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. (Jeremiah 22.3)
And let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos, 5.24)
You’ve heard it said, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth [Exodus 21.24]. But I say to you not to succumb to evil: but if one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him also the other.” (Matthew 5.39f.)
None of these comments constitutes a moral system; I may not accept or believe them (especially my “obligation” to an enemy) and the Church itself has fallen shamelessly down if  the advice of Matthew 5.39 is taken at face value as a standard for all Christians.
But simple historical honesty requires us to notice the change, and along with that (note well,  my friends who tout the iron law of evolution in all things progressive) that the advantageous ethic, the one that looks for compassion and generosity rather than vengeance and payback, is the one that survives the predations of history.  Not perfectly, but more adequately.
Frankly, atheists will get nowhere with the message of “good without God” and its accompanying parody of religious ethics and its drone about the pure awfulness of the Bible. They might succeed in persuading themselves of the rectitude of disbelief by creating a litany of biblical absurdities.  But then the core principle of development, which is really at the heart of the atheist worldview, is laid aside in favor of a partial and static view of history that careful investigation won’t support.
The moral is, you can’t call the police when there aren’t any. And you can’t blame the Bible for being a “moral archive” of how human beings have changed their minds over the course of 2500 years.



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Published: May 14, 2011
Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tags: atheism : Bible : Christianity : Cops : evolution of justice : historiography : history of ideas : Judaism : law : New Testament : police : R. Joseph Hoffmann : religion : Unbelief ..
27 Responses to “Of Anachronism”

.
 Herb Van Fleet 
 May 14, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Maybe the unbelievers are just trying to channel Volarire: “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
Reply
 
 Herb Van Fleet 
 May 14, 2011 at 1:48 pm
I mean “Voltaire.” Goddamned keyboard!
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 randy 
 May 14, 2011 at 1:52 pm
I suppose that in your view Mr. Hoffman there is nothing we atheists are permitted to say about religion without provoking your criticism. I guess we should all just shut up and not challenge religion or its adherents at all. The message campaigns you address in this post are peaceful. They are not intended to provoke nor criticize religion. Still you find even these rather tame statements too much to bear. Why the hell don’t you just become a Christian apologist. At least then we could understand your preaching. We wouldn’t like it any more. But at least it would be intellectualy honest and consistent.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 14, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Oh, Randy: You are the reason I write. Such absolute boneheaded reflexiveness. ” If the meaning of these slogans is that millions of people find moral value and meaning outside the constraints of religious faith, I agree–wholeheartedly–and I think I am one of them. I challenge anyone to a duel if they say my love of art, music and literature is deficient; and I will shoot first.”
Reply
 
 
 steph 
 May 14, 2011 at 2:32 pm
I don’t think the atheists have much affect on most religious believers. Despite the fact they claim they are “triumphant” and have advanced with “great strides forward”, I don’t think they’ve yet caught up with the evolution of religious belief. And I’m not sure what they’re supposed to have achieved in their “great strides forward”. If they’ve caused a few to reject fundamentalist beliefs, congratulations, but I wonder if the now ex religious fundamentalists are much wiser. Far better to encourage enquiry and doubt through education, in the history of religions. But most religious people do question and doubt (and read histories). Many ‘god ideas’ are quite profound, and changing, although I’ve even seen that suggestion dismissed as ‘waffle’ and worse, by internet atheists.
It’s encouraging to know though, that not everyone on this planet is as dogmatic as fundamentalists or the more vocal (internet) atheists. And most religious people (not in America) believe in evolution, including the evolution of religious beliefs. May the gods (not really) endow the atheists with the spirit (not really) of lateral thinking.
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 s. wallerstein 
 May 14, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Hoffmann:
 I’m happy to see that you’re back in the saddle again.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 14, 2011 at 2:41 pm
Yes, but I’ve misplaced my horse.
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 steph 
 May 14, 2011 at 2:43 pm
that must be of a bike – not a horse…
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 Bob MacDonald 
 May 14, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Nice article – thanks
 My concern is how to develop this ‘rule of law’ when the dundies, sorry I meant fundies, of all stripes want to establish the doing of the ancient law (pick from the following list – sorry again, the dropdown is not available in a comment) whatever they think they mean by this.
Jesus did something different – and so did the psalmist – and so did the writer of Jonah and Ruth not to mention Job and the writer’s criticism of a trivial reading of Deuteronomy. These teachers did not follow the law – they followed and storied a law of mercy and the presence of compassion. The fundies who do read the Bible need indeed to be changed by it. But they have to learn to read – and the way social structures teach fear and conformity will not result in such learning. The way religious institutions of all sorts work the formation of their flocks by coercive misinformation is a problem when there are so many of us – whatever our religion might be.
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 s. wallerstein 
 May 14, 2011 at 4:35 pm

Back in the Saddle Again.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 14, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Thanks Sam. I don’t own a bandanna or feel comfortable singing Yipee tie-yi-yay, but it shows how far America has come in accepting the cowboy minority. And I now know what the “saddle” is.
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 s. wallerstein 
 May 14, 2011 at 5:17 pm
I included the video for Steph, who, for generational reasons, probably
 has never heard the song before nor has seen cowboy movies in which the good guys wear white hats and without any visible means of support, ride the range righting wrongs and saving ladies in distress.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 14, 2011 at 5:22 pm
She IS culturally deprived that way! Probably to her benefit.
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 ken 
 May 15, 2011 at 11:14 am
I prefer Hoppy in his black hat….and that majestic, outdoor photography in his westerns…mesmerizing.
 Just watched him last night, in fact.
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 steph 
 May 14, 2011 at 6:34 pm
Thank you for the culture shock Sam. Chubby son of a preacher, singing cowboy from Texas, looks a little ungainly – no wonder his horse threw him off! I grew up down under with no telly at all – and still don’t have one. I do know that ditty though. I’m not sure how. Maybe it became famous for being so bad. But they all still wear white cowboy hats in Texas – are they pretending to be good? I don’t trust men in white hats, or white trousers or white frocks. And Gregory Peck who was very VERY good, if he wore a hat, he always wore black! In distress I’d rather be saved by Gregory than Gene. :)
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 ken 
 May 15, 2011 at 11:20 am
I’d prefer Tim Holt
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 steph 
 May 17, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Never heard of him. I like sensual reality. Live theatre, art, music, literature, nature and the sea, and most importantly right now, the history and evolution of beliefs, ideas and things.

 
 
 
 Rob Fisher 
 May 14, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Well, let’s throw in the reverse side of the coin as it sometimes helps to illuminate things. I’ve spent 27 years reflecting on evil. And still one of the chief questions constantly posed is: can you have a non-religious definition of evil? And if, as I agree with Joe, “people find moral value and meaning outside the constraints of religious faith”, then just what is it people, the tabloids, the lawyers are talking about when they use this language? What applies to one side of the coin in terms of an appreciation of art, music and literature, must also apply to the other side of the coin and an appreciation of violence, destruction and human wickedness.
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 John Anngeister 
 May 14, 2011 at 9:54 pm
Joseph, you write:
Why do we accept gratefully the social evolution of secular justice but deny religion the right to its own conceptual evolution by insisting it must be held accountable for things it produced in the Bronze Age?
All atheist arguments that miss this point invite only contempt from millions of non-fundamentalist and non-Catholic believers like myself (and by ‘contempt’ I mean no active hatred but only utter disregard).
I’m sure I would hear cries of ‘foul’ if I were to bring up some oddity from Livy or Galen and use it to make fun of the living science or medicine of the day. And such cries would be justified.
The fact that such arguments are so prevalent might only mean that the majority of atheists are in fact ex-fundamentalists or ex-Catholic, and so are merely projecting the demons of their own narrow childhoods.
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 s. wallerstein 
 May 15, 2011 at 9:51 am
Steph:
That song was voted 98 on a list of great songs from the 20th century:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_in_the_Saddle_Again
Gregory Peck is in another category of actor than Gene Autry. For example, To Kill a Mocking Bird.
My son is 32 and he also grew up with television, although he watches it a lot now. His pop cultural knowledge goes back to, say, Woodstock. He’s a musician and music teacher, so he’s listened to Elvis, but I doubt that he understands the Zeitgeist that made Elvis a star.
It’s great that you never watch TV. That must be one factor which contributes to the clear thinking which characterizes your posts.
Reply

 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 15, 2011 at 10:07 am
Ok you two: I’ve let it slide, but I do not remember posting anything on Gene Autry or Elvis. 10 point deduction and fair warning.
Reply
 
 
 elguiney 
 May 16, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Interesting points Joseph-
I’ve recently been thinking about similar issues (though perhaps from a more confrontational perspective than yours); I do feel there is considerable value to critiquing christian morality, but you’re absolutely right that picking anachronistic old testament atrocities does little more than show that the foundation of christian moral thinking is suspect.
Far more important is to confront christian morality at its strongest; so I spent some time rereading the sermon on the mount, and what I was struck by was how many aspects of the morality there are explicitly justified in terms of “do such and such, not because it will be good for anyone on earth, but because you will be rewarded in heavan”. I feel that it is this disregard for this world that is the real moral failing of traditional christian morals, and that it is much more interesting than rot from the old testament.
But then again, I havent counted myself as christian in almost a decade, so maybe there are some apologists who have found a dodge for even this critique.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 16, 2011 at 3:55 pm
You’re right about the style–but the style, given the era, was all about exhortation. I agree, that there is no formal reasoning process behind it, and the reward system is nothing we can embrace (“the kingdom of heaven” has no appeal for me). But what i do suggest is that we notice the development of the sorts of behavior that are endorsed, even though an atheist living in the modern world, where we need to think about why we do things, is bound to find the grounds for such conduct wanting. -Completely agree with the thrust of you comment, however and the need for critique.
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 John Anngeister 
 May 16, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Check that. The idea that Jesus used the phrase ‘kingdom of heaven’ to refer to the afterlife is a minority view – held by the kinds of people who think the world’s ending on Saturday.
If you look at the rest of the material about ‘the kingdom’ (i.e. the parables about the kingdom at Mt. 13:33-34 or 44-45) it’s plain that it represents something near at hand, something possible in a here-and-now kind of world – you can call it ‘utopian’ if you like, but it’s not transcendental pie in the sky in the original.
The ‘Father in Heaven,’ too, is supposed to represent a present reality. So you can’t simply assume that statements about the kingdom and the Father refer to the incentive of postponed and other-worldly rewards – unless the phrase is unequivocal.
I see an unequivocal statement about afterlife rewards only at 5:11 – but here the ‘doing’ is not social morality or philanthropy but simply patience in persecution (with implications of life-endangerment).
The only other place in the sermon is 6:19 – which is mostly about the vanity of temporal earthly treasures. Easy to see the rust and lurking thieves there, so what atheist would argue for the security of material possessions over intangibles like friendship? Most decent moralities (theist and atheist) are based on higher ‘intangibles’ than material reward.
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 rjosephhoffmann 
 May 16, 2011 at 6:57 pm
Brilliant–thanks John.

 
 elguiney 
 May 16, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Thanks for the learned response John, I remember Nietzsche saying something similar, but I wasn’t sure how consensus it was… I’ll have to think about it, but I don’t know if the distinction between otherworldly and here and now rewards is important for this kind of critique.
Two reasons: One, isn’t it more appropriate to ask what interpretation has been influential in christian thinking and moral development than to ask what Jesus, to the extent that he *is* historical, intended? Wouldn’t it be better to ask how those central teachings functioned after it became clear that the kingdom of heaven wasn’t actually coming any time soon, and *had* to be reinterpreted metaphorically? (actually asking here- I dont know)
Two, to step back a bit, it still seems that this morality is still fundamentally entangled with the idea of a created order (worldy or otherwise) that has been designed such that even “bad” things like poverty or being oppressed will be compensated for, and not in a consequentialist way, but because god wills it. Compare that to a modern atheist/humanist morality that sees this world as all there is, that humanity has no special place, but has tremendous power, and that we should strive to use that power to create the best world we possibly can. The two systems are not *necessarily* incompatible, but empirically they seem to be so. This, I think, is the sense in which one meaningfully be “good without god” and not “good with god”.

 
 John Anngeister 
 May 16, 2011 at 11:30 pm
elguiney, it was you who brought up the sermon on the mount.
I don’t agree that the ‘kingdom of heaven’ failed to come in the manner laid out in the parable-teachings (that is, in the manner of a seed capable of development). It only failed to materialize in the manner laid out in the Jewish ‘new age’ writers (the late apocalyptic or revelation-school, c.200BC-100AD). Since I judge that the real deal did materialize and only false hopes were duly falsified, I don’t think a re-interpretation as metaphor is warranted.
You write of a morality which “sees this world as all there is, that humanity has no special place, but has tremendous power, and that we should strive to use that power to create the best world we possibly can.”
The world needs all the help it can get, and so I’m fine with this attempt to create the best possible world by humans who claim their only exceptional quality is tremendous power. I only wonder that it hasn’t yet (especially after WWII) been treated with scorn in the pages of a post-modernist Candide Your thoughts?
But let’s use Kant if we’re going to try to bridge with each other on ethics.

 
 
 

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