Changing the date on this because of renewed relevance.
A re-post of one from a year ago when I was reading God and the New Atheism by John Haught.
October 18, 2010
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.
Babyish and smug, like singsonging “I know something you don’t know.”
I think I can gauge the family-member theist who tries that method on me. The ones who love me without “but you’re going to hell” getting between us are dismayed with the extent of the flaw in me that they’re implying. The ones who see “but you’re going to hell” first are pleased that I’m lacking the secret something because it makes their inability to explain it a mark of their superiority.
Actually, I think infinite indifference is the better term. No deity cares because there is none to care.
Yeah, but if the universe is not encompassed by an infinite Love, would a posture of receptivity and readiness to surrender, fool you into thinking it was so encompassed? IOW, using Haught’s method, how do you know if you’re fooling yourself or not?
I just don’t understand talk like “reality that is deeper than real”. What does that mean? I used to think I was too stupid to grasp the meaning of such writing, now I think there’s nothing to grasp. Dr. Dennett’s term “deepity” saved my sanity.
There is a tremendous appeal to the concept of “deeper mystery” which you can only know by not knowing anything; you run across it in the Tao Te Ching as well, once you step outside European/Western history. It’s the whole idea of “achieving enlightenment” by not doing anything, indeed by giving up effort to do anything.
For people who want effortless miracle, what could be better? I mean, why should you bust your butt mastering technical details of difficult subjects, when you could have “higher truths” by abrogating thought altogether?
I’m reminded, anyway, of the old T.E. Browne poem “Indwelling”, c.1875:
–The romanticisation of non-thought opposing Enlightenment values has been going on for some time, in our civilisation.
Is this the same Haught who Coyne wiped the floor with the other day in a debate? I just don’t understand how people can write books saying stuff like that and then be taken seriously. It’s deeply ignorant.
I think it’s unimaginative to believe the reason and science-ruled world can’t provide for transcendent experiences.
AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHY THEY DO IT.
Excuse shouting, but really, it drives me nuts.
And that’s exactly why it’s good that gnus are saying it’s bullshit, including that we’re saying it over and over and over again. As Jason Rosenhouse pointed out last year, it’s like advertising – repetition works.
Aratina, yes, same Haught.
Well, as Daffy Duck said: “Easy stomach, easy”
“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]”
This is not the faith experience of the vast majority of religionists. It is not the faith experience of my catholic family. It IS, possibly, the experience of those mystics,such as John of the cross or Teresa of Avila who did have what were probably endorphin-induced hallucinations. Such persons were, incidentally, regarded by the RCC executives with some considerable suspicion as they were so far outside the norm of religious belief.
And, as the buddha supposedly said, “these effects are not the reason we meditate”.
That’s a mighty big if. I fail to see any evidence for this love. The universe, being an unconscious, insentient thing, cannot love or hate. It can’t even produce indifference, which also requires a sentient consciousness. The “infinite love” is an assumption produced by wishful thinking.
Well if there were some goddy entity somewhere, the only attribute of it that we could discern would be total indifference. Not a good basis for religion involving a ‘personal god’…
“The Universe is Cold and does not care.”
Deepity has gone all the way to derpity.
Seems fitting. Welcome to the internets, Dr. Haught.
…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.
That’s not faith, that’s really good LSD!
Haught’s ‘faith’ is an amalgam of post modernist nonsense and New Age crap and since it could mean anything to anyone, will be very popular,regrettably.
Deepity has gone all the way to derpity
Or in Colbert’s formulation, “truthiness,” meet “deepiness.”
He talked about the same thing at U of K. He talked about “the evidence that comes from being carried away by something very large.” Of course he doesn’t mean “being carried away by something very large” literally, as in being grabbed by a polar bear and carried away as a meal. He means being “carried away” in some other sense – mentally, emotionally, “spiritually,” all those together. But I really would like to know how he can tell the difference between that and wishful-thinking or self-deception. I would also like to know why that thought doesn’t give him pause. He’s an academic, so he ought to.
Academics are answerable. They’re supposed to be competent. They’re not supposed to just “make stuff up,” to use the phrase that many think may have been what got Haught so angry. (I feel faintly – very faintly – guilty. I use that phrase a lot. For all I know it’s spread.) In any other academic department I can think of it would be simply laughable to call “being carried away by something very large” any kind of “evidence.” Maybe in the drama department it’s ok as an acting technique; maybe in the other performing arts it has its uses; but to call it evidence, and talk about it as if it demonstrated something? I just find that very very odd.
Yes, but what if the universe has spines on its tallywhacker, like a cat? I don’t think I’m quite ready to surrender to that.
Ophelia, why feel guilty at all? Guilt implies having done something (you consider to be) wrong, and from where I’m standing, Haught is simply making shit up. (Note that I deliberately did not use the word “stuff,” as you were polite enough to do.)
Argument from personal experience is a tough one to suss out, and even more difficult to defend against.
Because you can’t deny that someone who claims a transformative experience has had one. We can measure them on fMRI; we know where in the brain they occur.
The experiences are very, very real.
HOWEVER, what isn’t real is attributing such experiences to an external, supernatural entity. That’s just special pleading all the way down.
Because how can you tell which supernatural entity is truly responsible for your transformative experience? Yahweh? Allah? Lord Krishna? Xenu? The aliens who were riding the Hale-Bopp comet? How can you know for sure which? You can’t. Because the experiences are the same — as they are for all cults. All triggering the exact same brain chemistry in the same space in the brain.
Haught needs to explain why one needs to being with Jesus (as he claimed in the UofK debate) and not Xenu. For that, his only recourse is to resort to the “evidence” in the bible. Which is no evidence at all. At least not any more compelling than the Koran or the Ghitas or Dianetics or whatever else you might refer to as your “holy” book.
If I had read those quotes and been asked to guess the writer, I’d have said Deepak Chopra.
They were only missing a Quantum!
… and when you take the comforting dummy from the baby’s mouth, how it screams!