Whose “squawk”?
It’s strange to see The Chronicle of Higher Education giving Carlin Romano space to promote the Templeton Foundation.
The Templeton Foundation, which specializes in prodding believers and nonbelievers to discuss such things in civilized ways, has published all sorts of booklets, like “Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?”…
That’s a very flattering way of describing what Templeton specializes in. To a less infatuated observer it looks more as if Templeton specializes in flattering its own self – as in the CHE blurb for Romano’s piece:
Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle Review, is a professor of philosophy and humanities at Ursinus College. This essay is adapted from a talk he gave this summer as a Templeton-Cambridge Fellow in Science and Religion at the University of Cambridge.
See? To anybody who isn’t familiar with Templeton and its “Fellowships” that last bit sounds very very very ultra academic-prestigious. It’s Cambridge. It’s Cambridge twice, which must be twice as good as being Cambridge once. Plus it’s something else that sounds very dignified and prestigious too and it’s just because I don’t keep up that I don’t really know what it is, but being hyphenated with Cambridge and having temple in its name it’s obviously way important and rigorous and up there.
That’s how that works. Templeton “specializes” in locating itself in places like Cambridge so that the unwary will think that it has something to do with the eponymous university, and in giving out things called “Fellowships” so that the unwary will think that Templeton itself is kind of academic.
Romano, meanwhile, specializes in pejorative language.*
Before one gets edgy over Hawking’s latest ex cathedra squawk…Wittgenstein’s and Toulmin’s Cambridge antidote to Hawking’s smugness about God…
Is this the “discuss[ing] things in civilized ways” Romano had in mind?
*So do I, you might point out. Yes, but I don’t do it in the CHE, or about cosmologists.
I read about 2/3rds of that Squawk and gave up. He’s attacking a strawman. It’s not that science is a deliverer of a unique, objective account of the world, but that it does away with the need for God or any god as an explanation. If basic physics, for example, explains how the fridge light comes on when you open the door to look for a beer, then there’s no need to invoke the Fridge Leprechaun who is hiding behind the Cheedar, with torch in hand.
I might have this guy wrong, but he just seems like another Barney Zwartz type tool. First, caricature your gnu atheist opponent, then drag out some dead philosopher who showed why the caricature is false, and presto! Ordinary punter who doesn’t know his philosopher from his sophist will be convinced.
Did you notice that he seems to be implying that psychological states imply truth states in the article? I mean, I’m enjoying the Fridge Leprechaun experience right now, guess that implies the Fridge Leprechaun exists…..
By the way, I’ve read about half the Hawking’s book and reckon the ‘philosophy is dead’ quote is more a cry of exasperation with philosophers. They don’t, and who’d blame them, get Quantum Mechanics, so they’re behind. Thus the real philosophising is done by the physicists. That’s how I read it anyway. But as Eric McDonald pointed out over at Jerry’s pad, a statement such as ‘philosophy is dead’ is doing philosophy.
Over at WEIT, a commenter refers to Charles Taylor as someone to consider in matters of supernatural existences. Unfortunately, it is not the Chuck Taylor of Converse hi-top fame, but a goddy philosopher emeritus at McGill University and (drumroll please) Templeton Prize winner.
Here is a not now unfamiliar comment from a The Other Journal interview:
The usual complaints about the Gnus, but my favorite part is that he thinks the gnus have their backs up against the wall because they are threatened by the new ascendency of religion??? No wonder he is seeing minds without bodies.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Whose “squawk”? http://dlvr.it/659TR […]
I feel that the long article by Carlin Romano seems mainly to “prove” that all those modern atheists are wrong by showing that Wittgenstein became religious as he grew older and became exposed to all sorts of outside influences (i.e. the horror of war). After all, we know, Romano seems to argue, that atheists respect a real philosopher such as Wittgenstein, so if such a respected philosopher changes his mind and becomes religious, then surely all the atheists should follow suit.
This, I feel, is a typical example of quoting AUTHORITY to prove a point – a favourite tactic with other-directed religious people, but not a respectable method of argument.
Now hold on just a minute there, Jan. Are you telling me that if Richard Dawkins joined Scientology, you would not follow suit like the rest of us? I don’t think you’re allowed to be a cog in the New Atheist Noise Machine unless you’re a mindless drone. I’m going to have to ask you to turn in your membership badge and special decoder ring and leave immediately.
:- )