Bunting redux
Guess who’s back – why, it’s Madeleine Bunting. ‘What’s she up to now?’ you cry in pleased surprise. She’s going out of her way to show us how silly she can be, yet again.
There is a school of thought that the new atheists have so polarised the debate about the relationship between science and religion that it’s not a conversation worth having. The “Ditchkins” – as Terry Eagleton describes them in his recent book – have developed such a crude argument about religion based on their boasted ignorance of the thinking which underpins belief that it’s hard to know how a dialogue is possible.
‘School of thought’ – she means herself saying it, and Terry Eagleton saying it, and one or two other woolly prats saying it. That’s not actually a school of thought.
So what happens when there is an attempt at a very different kind of conversation which is not around the extremes of belief and non belief but largely amongst thoughtful believers, many of whom might be scientists? That was the proposition behind Lambeth Palace’s gathering of scientists, philosophers and theologians yesterday morning.
Ooooh, doncha wish you’d attended that? No, neither do I.
[T]he Archbishop of Canterbury was brisk, and he warned, “beware of the power of nonsense”. Science’s triumphalist claim as a competitor to failed religion was dangerous. In contrast, he offered an accommodation in which science and religion were “different ways of knowing” and “what you come to know depends on the questions you start with”. Different questions lead to “different practices of learning” – for example different academic disciplines. Rather than competitors, science and religion were both needed to pursue different questions.
Uh huh. And the archbishop doesn’t believe the Nicene creed. Except of course he does.
I am genuinely a lot more conservative than [Bishop John Shelby Spong] would like me to be. Take the Resurrection. I think he has said that of course I know what all the reputable scholars think on the subject and therefore when I talk about the risen body I must mean something other than the empty tomb. But I don’t. I don’t know how to persuade him but I really don’t.
Thank you Edmund Standing.
It was science which had established the nature of global warming and science would play a role in inventing the innovations which could mitigate its impact, but religion also had a role as an agent of change of personal behaviour. It had a crucial role because religion essentially concerned itself with relationships to other people, to the rest of humanity and to the natural environment.
Because religion and religion alone concerns itself with that; there is no secular discipline or way of thinking or set of ideas that concerns itself with relationships to other people; therefore religion has a crucial role. Except that the first part isn’t true. Other than that, it hangs together a treat.
There’s other stupid crap in there – crap about consumerism, crap about Darwin leading to Goebbels – but that’s enough to clutter the place up with. Bunting did a bang-up job of showing us what she set out to show us. We’re convinced.
This is a poe, isn’t it? Bunting had the a to z of apologists canards. She must be taking the piss.
Yeah you’d think, but she doesn’t have the nous for that. She believes this kack.
I’m baffled and slightly depressed by folks like Bunting. They seem to be everywhere. They just spout the same, tired and refuted bunk and seem to be respected for it. They claim to hold the reasonable center ground, and all who disagree with them are extremists. Which is just bullshit. If someone is full of crap in an argument, and an adversary holds a reasonable position, then Bunting putting herself between the two does not make her the center of reasoned argument and move the reasonable point of view to the extreme. It only means she’s positioned herself in crap.
“amongst thoughtful believers”–
The word “thoughtful seems well on its way toward acquiring a second meaning. A “thoughtful” bowl of porridge would be one that is just right. Not too hot and not too cold. No reasonable person could possibly find fault with such a bowl of porridge.
When is the next bus to Epsilon Eridani? I’ve had it with people like Bunting and Mooney.
Nope. To twits like Bunting, “thoughtful people” means “people who agree with me.” It’s sort of a code, ya see. It’s like Chris Mooney’s clever use of the word “compatible” and every asshat in the world’s ever-shifting use of the word “God.”
Humpty Dumpties, the lot of ’em.
“While public debate is still dominated by a perception of individuals as tantamount to billiard balls, independent and autonomous, there is another narrative rooted in biological research of connectedness and complexity, explained Celia Deane-Drummond, professor of theology and biological sciences.”
Now, that is a wierd metaphor – those pesky billiard balls acting all autonomous – it’s a crime I tell ya. But I’m sure it’s nothing to do with mixing theology and biology. No not at all.
“The ABC was brisk” Eh? Brisk? That is impossible. Poor Maddy must have been hallucinating. But actually, I would like to have been there. I remain puzzled that obviously intelligent and well-meaning people (such as John Houghton) can compartmentalise their minds to believe, most of the time, that evidence and refutability matter; but, also, that Jesus died, was briefly brought back to life, and then disappeared mysteriously, and that a god which played this horrible cat-and-mouse game with Jesus’s family and friends is worth anything other than our rage and contempt.
She doesn’t have the nous for that! You can say that again. I rather think that Bunting fancies herself in the big league. It must have given her a particularly delightful frisson just to have been there with all those high powered thinkers!
Yet if those high powered thinkers said something remotely intelligent, Bunting certainly didn’t notice. Imagine, today, taking a warning from Goebbels to the effect that science needs ethics, as if Goebbels and eugenics were the stuff of contemporary debate. It really does beggar belief.
But, even so, Williams was apparently at pains to stress the great danger of the power of nonsense! (Williams, mind you!) Whether what follows came Wort für Wort from Williams or not, it seems to be an accurate reflection of the mood of the meeting.
It’s hard to say what this vacuity was thought to mean, but at least danger seems plainly to have topped the list of concerns, which is no doubt why Goebbels was mentioned. But it is the ‘different ways of knowing’ that needs to be highlighted, because nothing that is reported by Bunting in the least suggests that what we have to do with in religion is a different (yet equal) way of knowing. (We are even provided with correlative literalisms: ‘religion into creationism and science into a fundamentalism’!)
A claim like that needs very strong support, and none is forthcoming. Simon Conway Morris, with his anthropic principle of convergence and the explicitly religious idea of relationality and connectivity which underlies it (it all comes back to love and compassion in the end, you see), comes closest, but he would surely not suggest that this provides knowledge in the way that his own study of the Burgess Shale provides knowledge. And the suggestion that religions as such have anything to teach us about consciousness is really a stretch too far.
And then we have the redoubtable Midgely asking the second of the two profound questions which puzzled the Lambeth gathering. The first, remember, was: What is the fuss all about? The second, from Mary Midgely: “What comes next?” And then immediately to the desideratum: a more fruitful discussion between science and religion! And then we have Conway Morris doing his Rowan Williams imitation, trying to be as muddyingly enigmatic as the bearded gnome from Wales. But surely, things might have been more productive if Williams had invited someone who would actually have raised questions which might have had an outside chance of prompting a more fruitful discussion – if there is such a discussion to be had.
The whole thing is so predictable and laughable. Get a group of religious people together who think that Dawkins and Hitchens are bad, and then mouth appropriate platitudes about the danger of science, the ethical centrality of religion, and some anodyne phrases about ‘ways of knowing’, and they will go away believing, anyway, that they have grabbed the nettle. But nothing of value was really said, and Bunting’s article is at least prima facie evidence that it wasn’t.
Sorry to go on so. The ABC is not my favourite flavour of the month.
Yes I was well aware of the irony of the ABC’s presence, Eric, given what he’d just been up to a day or two before. Bastard.
It’s even worse than I thought. Maddy chaired this absurd seminar. Whose aim was “examining how faith and science can contribute to a richer knowledge and a deeper understanding of the nature of truth.” And we are promised the arch-fraud’s ruminations, on YouTube, forsooth.
Ohhh… “different ways of knowing”? It hurts.
Imagine (and this isn’t actually too difficult) Gordon Brown being challenged on his spending figures and replying that there are “different ways of counting”. The ridicule would be unanimous and vast.
That’s how bad “different ways of knowing” is,
Tom,
ah, but when it comes to UK government spending, “different ways of counting” *do* exist – that’s how PFI has been justified for years.
And yes, the ridicule should indeed be unanimous and vast.
But still more PFI schemes are coming our way…
Why so she did. Why didn’t Maddy tell us she chaired the ‘seminar’? Modesty? Surely not. Stealth? Hmm.
Well yeah, stealth seems the likely explanation, since her shyly admiring tone gives the distinct impression that she was an innocent member of the audience bowled over by the wisdom of all the intellectual giants up front.
Speaking of the ABC, seen the book review in today’s Sunday Times? The ‘priest to the stars’ tells all. It’s fawning stuff that may spoil your Sunday morning.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6634028.ece
(The priest in question, Michael Seed, is one of the A of W’s minions but there’s a lot about the ABC.)
No, haven’t seen that; thanks. It’s 12:03, so morning is safe!