Hey, everybody, let’s pay attention to the positive aspects of religion!
Author: Ophelia Benson
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“Evangelical atheists”
Hey, everybody, let’s bring people together around shared values in spite of religious differences!
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Have some slush
John Haught says, in God and the New Atheism, that gnu atheists get faith all wrong, at least from the point of view of theology, which
thinks of faith as a state of self-surrender in which one’s whole being, and not just the intellect, is experienced as being carried away into a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than anything that can be grasped by science and reason. [p 13]
You know…there’s a problem here. I would like to say something sober and restrained about that; I would like to give a cool, sarcasm-free account of what I think is wrong with it, for once; but I find it very hard to do that, because it seems so babyish. I can’t get past the babyish quality, because if I do, there’s nothing left. It’s babyish all the way down. And that’s typical of Haught, at least in this book. It’s just packed with baby talk.
But I’ll give it a shot. The trouble is (obviously) that “a state of self-surrender” is indistinguishable from a state of self-deception, and is the sort of state to invite self-deception. An experience of being carried away into a gurgle-gurgle sounds just like either a hallucination or a powerful daydream. Period. There’s nothing else to say about it. That’s what’s so babyish – Haught has dressed it up in the usual boring purple language to make it look significant and meaningful and maybe even true, and that’s just silly. He’s also installed a handy device for forestalling the question “yes but what exactly do you mean by ‘a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than’ yak yak?” by making it the faculty that asks the question the comparison. That question is an emissary from science and reason, and the dimension is much deeper and more real than that, so the question is by definition not answerable, so ha.
…there are many channels other than science through which we all experience, understand, and know the world…To take account of the evidence of subjective depth that I encounter in the face of another person, I need to adopt a stance of vulnerability. [p 45]
Bollocks. He’s talking about unconscious processing, among other things (like empathy, intuition, and the like), but those are not dependent on adopting “a stance of vulnerability.” He uses sentimentality to persuade, and it’s a babyish trick.
…if the universe is encompassed by an infinite Love, would the encounter with this ultimate reality require anything less than a posture of receptivity and readiness to surrender to its embrace?
Same thing – attempted persuasion via sentimentality. Why infinite Love? Why not infinite Hate?
Well we know why: because when you go limp and let yourself go off into a lovely fantasy, you don’t fantasize about infinite Hate. But Haught’s confidence that his fantasies reflect reality (and indeed are realer than anything else) is…foolish.
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Many traditionalist clergy
The Anglican Bishop of Fulham is going to switch over to Catholicism because he prefers the Catholic church’s way of dealing with pesky women, which of course is to tell them to shut up and do what they’re told.
The Pope created a special enclave in the Roman Catholic Church for Anglicans unhappy with their church’s decision to let women become bishops.
Too bad all men can’t find enclaves like that, isn’t it. If only. If only there were special enclaves in universities for male academics unhappy with the prospect of seeing women become professors. If only there were special enclaves in law for male lawyers who don’t want to have to put up with women judges or prosecutors; if only there were special enclaves in medicine for male doctors who don’t want to have any female colleagues. If only the whole god damn world were full of special enclaves every few feet for men who are so benighted and greedy and conceited that they can’t get over thinking that women are inferior.
[Broadhurst] is currently the “flying bishop” charged with looking after traditionalist parishes opposed to women priests and bishops in the dioceses of London, Southwark and Rochester.
The Catholic Group said it was determined to stay in the Church of England and fight for a better deal for Anglicans who did not want to serve under women bishops.
These poor damaged people need looking after, they need a better deal, because they have been so bruised and battered and harmed by the mere suggestion of female equality even in church.
…many traditionalist clergy are unhappy with the level of protection so far offered to them from serving under a woman bishop, but might hesitate in the face of a decision likely to cause them considerable personal hardship.
The level of protection? They’re unhappy with the level of protection? Men need protection from having a woman boss?
What level of protection do I get? If protection is being offered, I want protection from hearing from men who think women are so stupid and weak and incompetent that it’s dangerous to have to work under them. I want protection from this stupid, vicious, taken for granted misogyny.
Imagine re-writing that passage.
…many traditionalist clergy are unhappy with the level of protection so far offered to them from serving under a black bishop.
…many traditionalist clergy are unhappy with the level of protection so far offered to them from serving under an Indian bishop.
…many traditionalist clergy are unhappy with the level of protection so far offered to them from serving under a Mexican bishop.
The disgustingness and social unacceptability is instantly obvious – but when it comes to women – oh that’s a whole different thing. Of course women can’t be treated as equals; don’t be silly.
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Anglican clergy hate women
“Many traditionalist clergy are unhappy with the level of protection so far offered to them from serving under a woman bishop.”
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Frans de Waal on morals without God
Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of the Darwinian view that morality grew out of the social instincts.
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Yale fraternity pledges chant “No means yes!”
And “Yes means anal!” – while marching past women’s dormitories. Welcome to rape culture.
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Sean Wilentz on Glen Beck as “educator”
The return of the John Birch Society.
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New albigensianism
The gnu atheist-haters have been having a busy weekend. Yesterday Michael Ruse told us, after saying that he took Philip Kitcher’s article seriously even though he disagreed with it, and wouldn’t be writing about it if he didn’t –
(Actually, as a general rule that is just not true. I write about the New Atheists, even though I don’t think their position is worth taking seriously at all. Or rather, I accept many of the conclusions, but I think the arguments are lousy. But I write about the New Atheists because I think their hateful attitude towards believers is a potential force for great social and moral evil.)
And today Julian Baggini told us about the way atheism is currently perceived (without telling us that he has been doing his bit to foster the very perception he finds worrying).
The problem is that while the word atheist itself means nothing more than “not-theist”, it seems that for many, “a” stands for anti…If being an atheist meant being anti-theist, then I would not be one. I am an anti-dogmatist, an anti-fundamentalist, yes. But I have no hostility to theism as such, and have no desire to strip all theists of their faith.
Neither do we. (I’m including myself among the anti-theists, which is fair enough – my overt atheism is the stated reason the owners of The Philosophers’ Magazine removed my name from the masthead with the last issue, after six years of being on it as Editorial Advisor, then Deputy Editor, then Associate Editor. Julian of course is one of the owners, so it’s fair enough to think I belong to the guilty group.) Neither do we – what we have desire to do is say frankly and unapologetically what we think is wrong with such beliefs. It is a form of majoritarian bullying to pretend that that is the same thing as wanting to “strip” people of their beliefs. If that were the case, Julian would be a criminal simply for being a philosopher.
Of course I think theists are mistaken, but no one should be automatically hostile to everyone they disagree with. Hostility should be reserved for the pernicious, the wicked and the harmful.
But again – the hostility is for the beliefs, not the believers, at least not unless the believers are shouting at us. Again, it’s a ploy, and a nasty one, to pretend otherwise.
Dividing the world up into believers and non-believers, while accurate in many ways, doesn’t draw the distinction between friends and foes. I see my allies as being the community of the reasonable, and my enemies as the community of blind faith and dogmatism. Any religion that is not unreasonable and not dogmatic should likewise recognise that it has a kinship with atheists who hold those same values. And it should realise that it has more to fear from other people of faith who deny those values than it does from reasonable atheists like myself.
Well, that has the virtue of being clear, at least. Julian is saying he sees us – the overt atheists – as his enemies. He’s saying he is reasonable and we are not, and he is an ally of reasonable people and we are enemies.
He is in Ruse country.
He ends by pointing to “two sad facts”:
that atheism has come to be seen as anti-theism, and that, perhaps partly in response, we expect people of faith to forge not-that-holy alliances with each other rather than far better unholy alliances with kindred non-believers. We should challenge both those assumptions, for the sake of values that good believers and good atheists alike hold dear.
So now he’s among the good atheists, and we are among the evil ones.
It’s staggering.
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Thanks? For what?
Twelve of the Chilean miners went to a “service of thanksgiving” at the mouth of the San Jose copper and gold mine today. Thanksgiving for what?
Imagine this scenario. Imagine last Thursday the Minister of Mines and all the engineers held a press conference and revealed that they had blown up the mine and trapped the 33 on purpose.
Would the 33 and all the people who were afraid for them for 70 days feel grateful to the minister and the engineers for rescuing them after first trapping them?
They wouldn’t, you know. They would be livid. They would be angry beyond imagining – they would want to do violence.
But that’s what “God” did, obviously.
So why are people thanking “God”?
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Anglican congregation accepts pope’s invitation
To convert to Catholicism to escape ordination of women. God hates women.
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Baggini gives atheist “sermon” in Westminster Abbey
Divides atheists into good, reasonable atheists and bad, dogmatic, theist-hating atheists. Puts himself in the first group.
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Alex Clark reviews Luka and the Fire of Life
Rushdie includes a trip through the Respectorate of I, where everyone takes offence and visitors are warned to mind their manners.
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Benoît Mandelbrot 1924-2010
Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to refer to a new class of mathematical shapes whose uneven contours could mimic the irregularities found in nature.
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10 die in Indian temple stampede
The victims had gathered to witness the traditional sacrifice of goats; 40,000 devotees had thronged the temple at the time of the stampede.
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Gender equality in Sweden
Both in education and in the labour market, the genders are not equally represented.
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The anger fuelling Serbia’s rioters
“The gay parade was a provocation against Serbian people,” explains a member of the nationalist group 1389.
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Anthroposophy is not a safe haven from despair
It’s a common accusation from anthroposophists that materialism, atheism and even intellectualism cause mental disease and unhappiness.
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Waldorf communities
The very strong community bonds and shared values and ideals risk creating very strong exclusion mechanisms as well.
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Why is there bumping rather than nutting?
Michael Ruse is explaining about religion and morality now. It’s way deep.
Is there a place under the accommodationism canvas for the non-believer? I think there is for I aspire to be one such person. As…argued at length in my book Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, I believe that one can argue for all of modern science and yet agree that there are certain questions that science leaves unanswered: Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the ultimate ground of morality?
I believe that although one need not turn to religion — I am simply a skeptic on these sorts of questions — it is legitimate for the believer to offer answers.
What does he mean “legitimate”? It’s not a crime; the believer has a legal right to offer answers; but that doesn’t mean the answers are any good, or interesting, or well reasoned, or worth paying attention to.
“Legitimate” isn’t the right word, because it’s beside the point. Legitimacy is not the issue. The issue is why should anyone care what “the believer,” qua believer, “offers” on questions like why is there something rather than nothing and what is the ultimate ground of morality? The answers that religion “offers” to those questions are dogmatic and stupid and wrong, and thus they are worthless, so why does Ruse bother with this elaborate minuet of deference to them when he doesn’t buy them himself?
Who knows, and who cares, except that I have a heightened awareness of Ruse’s malice toward unapologetic atheists at the moment, so I feel like pointing out what pointless deepities he’s giving us here.