What goes where
I had one long-standing mistake corrected on the trip to Stockholm. I had been thinking, ever since first hearing from Christer (in January I think), that Fri Tanke was a magazine as well as a publishing company, and that it had published that article by Julian saying “The New Atheist movement is destructive.” I was wrong. I found this out when we were all out for dinner in Östermalm and talking about the hostility to overt atheism, which they talked about before I did, much to my surprise – I thought Sweden would be better that way than the Anglophone countries, but it’s not. So we were talking about this so I said very cautiously, “…And yet you published that article…” and Christer looked blank and said no we didn’t. Eh?! I said golly, you would know of course, but I could have sworn…And then he realized what I was thinking of: there is a magazine called Fri Tanke, but it’s Norwegian, and it’s nothing to do with them.
Giant shifting of gears in head. They didn’t publish that article. Ah! That’s good…because I never liked it.
Amusingly, it took me until the next day to get it into my head that Swedish Fri Tanke doesn’t publish a magazine at all, though some of the people at Swedish Fri Tanke do publish a magazine for Humanisterna, called Sans. They interviewed me for it.
So. Got that? There’s a Norwegian magazine called Fri Tanke and a Swedish publisher called the same thing and a Swedish magazine – quite like the US Free Inquiry – called Sans. It’s good to get such things sorted out.
I’m confused. Can you start all over again?
I didn’t know that Julian Baggini’s (“that”) article started off in Scandanavia, whether Norway or Sweden. But it is important to note that the Norwegian magazine Fri Tanke (which I assume means ‘Free Thought’) that published Julian’s essay also published a reply by George Williamson, who teaches philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan, and which, to my mind, is quite a decisive reposte to Julian’s surprisingly shallow criticism — which was (for those who have forgotten) the article in which Julian says that he had not read any of the popular books by the so-called “four horsemen”, because they wouldn’t have anything new to tell him anyway, and reading them would be just a waste of time. Williamson’s response is fair and devastating, to my mind, and you can find it here. (Williamson points out that the book by Pierre Bayard which Julian uses to justify commenting on books he hadn’t read (How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read) is found in the humour section of his local bookstore.)
That article by Julian Baggini is shockingly bad. I’m not sure if it was partly satirical but some of the points were laughable (intentional or not). In particular his point that if atheism succeeds to get rid of theism it will be an act of self destruction since you need a theism to be able to oppose it with atheism (at least that’s the gist of the argument I thought he was putting out there!)
Atheism’s complete replacement of theism would extinguish the need for antitheism; only by conflating these does it appear paradoxical.
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Thanks for that link, Eric. A good reply to a poor op-ed.
I wonder if Massimo thinks Julian Baggini was right to comment on books that he has not even read. Seeing as he is the decider of who can say what about what nowadays.
I did a comment on Julian’s article at the time.
I did it as cautiously as I could manage (and I told Julian I was doing it), because I work for TPM, but I disagreed with the article.
I did another comment the next day.
Funny, that was only a year and a few months ago; it seems like a lot longer. In the aftermath of the recent “Tom Johnson” wars I’m entirely persona non grata at TPM.
There was one more post on the subject a month later, after a second article, this time at Comment is Free.
Eh, maybe. But I just got a copy of the 50th issue and see your name in there!
Still a quality magazine, whether or not there’s much cuddling going on behind the scenes.
The 50th, yes, but not the 51st. The non grata thing came in the period between the two.
Yes, ’tis hard to believe it’s only slightly over a year ago that we were all commenting like mad on Julian’s article! Well, I only commented once, that I could see, here on B&W (must have been asleep at the switch), but it did seem longer ago than March of 2009. Is that because I am so much older and forgetful, or is my life so full? Can’t be the latter. Must be age.
In any event, it’s nice to go back and review the article and the comments. I think we were all right to be a bit alarmed at Julian’s point of view, especially the rather strange view that the so-called ‘four horsemen’ got their identity from opposition to god or to believers. Only Hitchens, of the four, in the DVD of their conversation, says that he would miss religious believers if they were gone, since he found the criticism of religion so culturally important. And he does say it in his book, too, I think, that criticism of religion is the beginning of criticism. And there’s a point to that. Certainly, in our cultural situation, that is still true, I think. And I’m not altogether sure I want religious believers, even moderate ones, sleeping comfortably at night. I still think unbelievers have to be very forceful in their opposition to religion, and wafflers shouldn’t be given exaggerated kindness.
I worry about the enemy of my enemy is my friend attitude. I can see why an organization promoting evolution instruction in public schools, say, might consider an alliance with openly religious groups which oppose intelligent design/creationism. But would it be a wise strategy? What happens when an issue such as vouchers for private schools arises? Most of the academics at BioLogos are employed at private religious colleges – would they support public education? What would happen if these same academics took over the leadership of an organization like the NCSE?