Adam Lee has a post on the “suppression” of Richard Dawkins, based on that interview with Kimberly Winston a few weeks ago. There’s a comment on it that is surprisingly oblivious to something that seems completely obvious to me. (Which just goes to show – what’s obvious to me is not obvious to thee. That’s what all this is about, in the end.)
Adam, your points are as always well thought through and equally well written.
What I don’t understand is the obsession that some in the atheist community have in following Richard Dawkins every word and then proceeding to perform an autopsy on the perceived flaws in his character. He is after all human like the rest of us, albeit extremely talented and skilled in areas I am only just able to understand as a layman.I can understand the religious zealots picking him apart, as they see him as a threat to the truth behind their fairy tales and the power and control that their false beliefs gives them over their flock. However it seems though there is a desire for the atheist community to have a messiah to rival god in the religious world and to many, Dawkins excellent works on the subject have elevated him to this perceived status.
I am a proud atheist and have no need to look for any idol in my life to replace a non existent god. I idolise the true outstanding behaviours in human kind; love caring, compassion and putting others needs above your own. As humans we all have character flaws, look hard enough and you will find them in all of us. Why this obsession with Dawkins,? Brilliant scientist and great orator aside he is after all a non believer like me with his human character flaws like me and the rest of us.
So why this obsession?
Seriously?
Because he’s immensely popular and influential.
That’s why.
He’s immensely popular, so people take their cues from him, they pay attention to what he says, he shapes some of their thinking.
He’s influential: he has a foundation, he gives money to organizations, his presence at a conference draws paying customers. The press goes to him for thoughts on atheism and secularism. He can promote people he likes, and he can draw harassment and threats down on people he dislikes.
That’s why.
This popularity and influence naturally shape the way others deal with him and with his critics. People who run organizations have every reason to want to avoid annoying him, and almost no reason to want to annoy him apart from whatever substantive disagreements they may have. Substantive disagreement is as milkweed in the face of all the motives they have to stay on his good side.
All that means, among other things, that every damn time he issues some Twitter taunt against what he takes to be the wrong kind of feminism, he makes things worse for atheist feminists in general. He apparently still doesn’t grasp that simple fact, but he ought to – it’s not as if he’s unaware of his sales figures or his popularity. (I’ve seen him using his sales figures as a weapon against interlocutors on Twitter.)
So, all that is why. There’s more; I could go on about it for thousands of words; but you get the drift. That’s why.
I can understand the religious zealots picking him apart, as they see him as a threat to the truth behind their fairy tales and the power and control that their false beliefs gives them over their flock.
Actually, I think religious zealots might like him a lot more than we do, because he has a huge audience who can see him reinforcing Christian stereotypes about atheists with his asinine behavior: a sheltered elitist, self-important, mean and abrasive, rejecting some pretty basic morals as well as religious doctrine, pretty ignorant about what religious people really believe, and not really involved in any important cause at the ground level (so they can point to him to justify their anti-atheist bigotry without drawing any attention to what he’s “fighting” against). In addition, he, like Harris, spouts inflammatory rhetoric that tends to hinder atheists and liberals of various religions from uniting — which serves the right-wing-authoritarians just fine.
@1 Raging Bee…
Agreed. I especially think the liberal churches no longer view Dawkins, et al, as anything other than a source of amusement or head-shaking condescension. Rather than an existential threat (as if that was ever a possibility).
The people who constantly question criticism of Dawkins should instead ask themselves why, if what he says doesn’t matter, they feel the pressing need to leap to his defense every single time.
The irony is that this all sounds really familiar.
2004: “Why does that Richard Dawkins keep talking about religion? I’m an atheist, too, but you don’t hear me going on and on about it.”
2014: “Why do you keep talking about Richard Dawkins? I don’t agree with everything he says either, but you don’t hear me going on and on about it.”
Dawkins is a celebrity, based on an excellent track record as a scientist and science populariser. Celebrities get media attention, and their tweets get retweeted until it becomes a cacophonous jungle out there.
But Dawkins also has attitude, which most celebs manage to keep to themselves. Not so Dawkins.
So Dawkins becomes a celebrity based on attitude.
Absolutely agreed. It’s time for Dawkins to take a rest from promoting atheism. I have taken another look at The God Delusion and it is truly as weak, philosophically, as many philosophers have pointed out. I must have been especially angry at religion when I first read it to have lent any credence to the book. And, besides all that, it’s poorly written. It doesn’t have the scintillating quality of his works on evolution, where he truly knows a thing or two. Badly researched, badly argued, badly written. This is coming home to roost now that he has achieved an immense public stature.
It is as much a concern for all atheists as it is of feminist atheists in particular. (Outside of Stalinists and Libertarians, can one BE atheist without being, almost by default, a feminist?)
Theocrats can ride smugly on the anti-Dawkins crowd, they can avoid the broad categorical problems with their goods and load up on prefab tropes to sling at Dawkins. Almost all of those tropes triggered by damn’ fool things Dawkins has said on subjects outside of simple atheism, and outside his own field.
Dawkins, like anybody else, can be approved for his good works etc. AND called out when he pontificates in foolish quips that can’t stand on their own, or are wildly off-base in a larger context (e.g. MRA) that he hasn’t even considered.
Richard Dawkins is fair game, that’s the bottom line. We not only have the right, but we have a duty to call out others like him when they step out of line.
No, I don’t agree with that. It sounds like the parody version of the feminist wing of atheism, the one that Dawkins’s fans are always yelling at as if it were the real thing. I don’t think I have a “duty” to “call out” anyone, and I sure as hell don’t consider myself the arbiter of what the line is and who has stepped out of it.
Our apologies, perhaps our wording could have been more clear. Just saying that popular influential and public figures like Dawkins are fair game for public criticism. And that when they do things that are harmful to whole classes of people, we have a moral and ethical obligation to say so.
Do you disagree with any of that, and if so why?
No, of course I don’t disagree with it, it just repeats what I said in the post. On the other hand it does word it differently, and it’s not the way I would word it. There’s too much assumption of being right, being an authority, knowing everything. That assumption is part of what I object to in Dawkins, and it’s not one I make about myself. I didn’t say anything as sweeping as “they do things that are harmful to whole classes of people” and I didn’t talk about having a moral or ethical obligation. That has more than a whiff of self-righteous vanity. What I said about Dawkins is more specific and more limited than that:
“every damn time he issues some Twitter taunt against what he takes to be the wrong kind of feminism, he makes things worse for atheist feminists in general.” I think that’s true, and I think I can defend it. It’s better to stick to what can be defended.
Ophelia @11 –
Thank you very much for the clarification. Our initial comment @8 was worded poorly, and perhaps so was @10 as there was no intention to suggest that we know everything or have any authority over others. Sometimes communication is a particular challenge of ours, apologies for that.
With no intention of arguing the point further and just for clarity sake…
Realizing that intentions are not magic and that our wording did not convey it clearly, by “they do things that are harmful to whole classes of people” what we had in mind was not different from your phrasing “every damn time he issues some Twitter taunt against what he takes to be the wrong kind of feminism, he makes things worse for atheist feminists in general.” In our mind “do things that are harmful” is basically another way of saying “makes things worse” and “whole classes of people” is a category of which “atheists feminists in general” is a specific example. Again, not intending to argue, just trying to clarify where we’re coming from. Apologies again for not being more clear.
I’ve given this a bit of thought over the past several months, especially when I’ve been inclined to say, “Can we start ignoring him now?” Eventually, I realized that I pay attention to posts about Dawkins in much the same way as I pay attention to Right Wing Watch. As you and Lee said, he’s a rich and influential person and so even his most ludicrous and poisonous statements get media attention and a public hearing. Several years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that I’d ever regard Dawkins in this way.
Second, I have a longstanding interest in the ways governments (the US ad UK in particular), corporations, and their networks of think tanks and political organizations surreptitiously spread their ideologies and work to sabotage social justice movements. In light of the involvement of some known atheists with AEI and some of the recent organization/foundation shenanigans, I’m even more concerned than ever that the atheist and skeptical movements have been and are being used as vehicles for these interests.
Third, I’m disappointed. It’s largely my own fault, I admit, because I hadn’t sufficiently investigated what Dawkins and others had said in the past and hadn’t been attentive enough to some evidence. Nevertheless, I had difficulty believing that he and others would be so resistant to applying to themselves the principles they so passionately, publicly espoused, or that they could so callously defend some of the things they have.
Finally, I care about the atheist/secularist cause. I feel that I need to know what people like Dawkins are saying so that I can distance myself from them and my anti-faith advocacy and values from theirs.
@ #8. I intensely dislike “fair game.” It’s a term used by $cientology. It also reminds me of the ‘pit’s attack on feminists. Under “Fair Game,” there is *no* attack or harassment that is off-limits for either group, and I don’t want any part of that. I prefer Ophelia’s wording, and think that it’s fair to civilly criticize Dawkins for his public statements that harm people.
I will repeat it again, just so that it is clear what I had in mind earlier. The problem with Dawkins is precisely that he is speaking about things about which he knows very little. That, of course, includes feminism, but it also includes religion. There is a widespread idea (to which I fell prey for some time) that the new atheists had addressed religion necessarily and reasonably. Now, this is not a defence of religion, but I think it needs to be said that the new atheists (the central core of them, though I’m inclined to exclude Hitchens, because his confrontation with religions was more humane and literary) were not only not speaking from a position of strength, but were speaking largely in ignorance. Dawkins’ anti-religious campaign, just like his anti-feminist one, is the outcome of the internet generation, and for that reason is unfortunately shallow and uninformed. He approaches feminism in the same way, without making the slightest attempt to study feminist history and thought. Dawkins’ problem is that he doesn’t know how to think. This may seem surprising in view of some of the quite wonderful stuff he has done on ethology and evolution, but it is not. And it was clear (and we should have noticed it) in The God Delusion. Thinking includes the ability to appreciate shades of opinion, and to sort out ideas that have depth from those that do not. Dawkins shows no ability to do this when it comes to atheism and religion. He faces the same problem when he addresses the concerns of women. He simply hasn’t the slightest idea what the “fuss” is all about, a very typical male response to the concerns of women. In many ways, Dawkins is as far from understanding women as the pope is, otherwise he wouldn’t come out with such offensively flippant caricatures. But it should be obvious that his assessment and understanding of religion is just as inadequate. Dawkins is speaking (or at least trying to) outside of his expertise, and it shows. Without mentioning names I notice this in a number of other new atheists (which is why I took my departure from them some time ago), and the comment stream on many new atheist sites (including many on Freethought Blogs I should add) is often not only shallow and dismissive, but pretends to a breadth of experience and knowledge which the commenters obviously do not possess. I now understand what it was that Julian Baggini opposed in the new atheism. It is vividly on show in much that Dawkins says and writes about women. His understanding of religion (and atheism, I think) is just as shallow, strident and includes a pretence to a knowledge which he simply does not possess. Talk about the Emperor’s clothes! Sorry, no paragraphs. This is a package thought!
Eric MacDonald @15
As one of the Gnu Atheists you have specifically castigated as being iggerant about religion (while simultaneously showing you didn’t understand the Courtier’s Reply), I’d like to point out a couple of weak points in your general sneer at “New Atheists.”
Many Gnu Atheists are actually knowledgeable about religious minutiae. You derided my comment about Aquinas’ “Proofs of God” being based on various logical fallacies. You claimed I didn’t appreciate the sheer, magnificent something or other that Aquinas showed while begging the question and using special pleading. But most theists are completely unaware of what Aquinas wrote or who Anselm was or how the filioque controversy was a major cause of the Great Schism. It’s very east to scoff at Dawkins and other Gnu Atheists for not mentioning the differing theologies of Bonaventure and Duns Scotus because we fixate on the actual beliefs of the majority of theists.
While I’m actually aware of how Augustine of Hippo and Dionysius the Areopagite influenced Bonaventure, I’ve never mentioned Bonaventure on FTB before because the vast majority of Christians don’t know and don’t care about his theology. Evangelicalism and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy are more important to modern Christians than scholasticism. Pat Robertson is a greater influence on American Christians than Peter Abelard.
Al Dente wrote:
Exactly. I’ve no time whatsoever for Dawkins, but that shouldn’t mean that we let those claiming that he didn’t deal with ‘sophisticated’ theology in TGD get a free pass. We know it’s not a response to ‘sophisticated’ theology in the same way we know that the overwhelming majority of believers have never heard of this ‘sophisticated’ theology, and that it plays no part whatsoever in their belief system.
That Dawkins might claim that it’s sufficient to cover both ‘sophisticated’ theology and day-to-day belief, of course, is anothe issue entirely…
johnthedrunkard @ 7
One can certainly be an atheist without really thinking about feminism much at all (if one is male, at any rate).
But beyond that, I think someone who does not believe gods exist can still come up with justifications for misogyny — and moreso for anti-feminism– that are entirely secular in character, or at least far enough removed from any religious basis to seem so.
Al Dente, I thought maybe someone would answer as you have done, although I have no memory of castigating you for not appreciating the sheer magnificence of Aquinas. I think you must have someone else in mind. However, this quote from your comment is reason enough to dispense with the new atheism (to my mind). You are under no obligation, of course, to agree:
Fixating on the actual beliefs of the majority of theists is about as silly a programme as you could possibly devise. What difference does it make whether a majority of theists believe “X” unless “X” is the best that can be said for theism? All you have done is overwhelmed a weak case, which is hardly what you want to do. Most people (let us suppose) think of God as an existent amongst existents. But that is not how God has traditionally been understood. So if, like Anthony Grayling, you dismiss God because you don’t believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden (as he does), then you have not even begun to understand what is mean by the word ‘God’ (when capitalised for theological emphasis).
As for your completely outrageous claim that just because “most theists are completely unaware of what Aquinas wrote or who Anselm was or how the filioque controversy was a major cause of the Great Schism,” you are somehow exempt from at least trying to understand what Aquinas or Anselm or Kung or Macquarrie or others have argued with respect to theistic belief, you simply don’t understand what it means to argue a case. Dawkins does it very poorly, and thinks that the job is done for all time. That’s not the way it works. You either take religion seriously as a rational pursuit — and it is indeed highly rational — or you simply play at arguing against religion. Now, what do you want to do: show that religion is not, for all its rationality, able to give a justification for religious belief? or simply ignore what religious people are saying in defence of their beliefs and simply dismiss them with empty headed hauteur? You make the choice. There really isn’t another one.
Of course, you can always say, as you seem to want to, that you can’t see any reason for religious belief (and the expression “belief in God” doesn’t cut it), and therefore you simply cannot see any reason for holding a religious faith. Fine and dandy, but if that is what you do, remember that you have excluded yourself from the discussion, and stop pretending that you have anything relevant to say regarding the justifications for religious faith. As I say, that’s what you and Dawkins and Coyne and so many others have done, with almost zero attention paid to what theologians and philosophers have said. Well, fine, but then don’t expect to be taken seriously. Having taken my departure from the new atheism, I am trying to establish what might be considered to be good reasons for disbelief, but I no longer look for guidance from those, like you, who have simply stopped thinking about it.
From where I stand just now, I don’t think I do understand Aquinas’ arguments. I do not understand his arguments at all. Dawkins response to them, as many philosophers have already pointed out, are simply schoolboy stuff. He doesn’t understand them at all, and I think I am closer to understanding. But I also think, along with a number of others, that science is not a good foundation for arguing against the existence of God, and that is what most new atheists think are unanswerable objections. So, I am starting over again. Indeed, that is what philosophy often has to do, when the existing arguments seem unsound, as they seem to me, especially when they are backed up with so much complacent certainty. That is a sure sign that a mistaken turning has been made somewhere, for all knowledge is, in some sense, provisional, even scientific knowledge. This is something that the new atheists, dedicated as they are to the argument that the only source of knowledge is science, simply seem not to understand. I am happy to record you in their company. And, no, I suspect you do not understand Aquinas’ arguments. Neither do I. But I cannot remember deriding you. That is not my intention now, nor has it ever been.
Eric MacDonald:
You are funny.
That you don’t understand his arguments is your failing; that the response is “schoolboy stuff” is irrelevant as to its merits.
—
In the context of whether magical creator beings exist, I suppose so.
(In real life, not-so-much)
John – no that’s not right. Arguments can be difficult to understand without being bad or worthless. That doesn’t at all mean they can be dismissed with a word. A difficult argument is not necessarily a bad argument, to put it mildly.
[OT + meta]
Ophelia, Eric is not claiming it’s hard to understand, he’s claiming he doesn’t understand it. More to the point, he’s disputing the response to it on a basis other than its merits.
But really, the Cosmological Argument?
(Specious, yes; special pleading, yes; incomprehensible, no)
Eric MacDonald @19
I don’t believe this. You’re actually saying that rebutting the beliefs of the majority of Christians is “silly”? Is it silly to criticize religious homophobia based on God’s condemnation of homosexuals? Is it silly to argue against having religious mythology taught in schools instead of science? Is it silly to condemn the Catholic Church for letting Savita Halappanavar die because the Pope thinks that God thinks abortion is evil? If you think these things are “silly” then you and I have very different definitions of “silly”.
You keep forgetting one very important fact. Gods don’t exist. Sophisticated, simplistic or anything in-between theology is the opinions of people guessing what an imaginary being thinks, wants and approves of. All theology is weak. Some of it is beautifully buttressed, soaring, magnificently constructed cloud castles, but all of it, without exception, is meaningless drivel based on exactly nothing.
We both know there are bazillions of concepts of gods. After all, the Hindus claim there are 30 million different gods, with innumerable avatars, manifestations and incarnations. But even if we restrict ourselves to the Christian gods (there are more than one) we find everything from a vague, deist deity who fired up the universe but otherwise doesn’t do much to a white bearded geezer who sometimes answers prayers, helps people find their car keys, and has an unhealthy fascination with sex. You, that’s you Eric MacDonald, may feel more comfortable considering a god more akin to the deist god but most Christians, the people you like to dismiss as irrelevant, believe in gods closer to the geezer.
I’d be a lot happier with you if you argued with what I say instead of the “New Atheist” who exists solely in your head says. Here’s something I said in my post @16:
I’ve read Aquinas and Anselm and Bonaventure and Duns Scotus and Augustine, among others. I had an interest in the scholastics and spend some time learning about them AND learning about their antecedents, successors and critics. I know what filoque is and how it brought about the Great Schism. Believe it or not I have a decent background in Christian theology, specifically Catholic theology. Your apology for claiming that I’m ignorant about theology. while not expected, will be accepted.
I understand several reasons for religious belief. Indoctrination from infancy, wishful thinking, fear of death, sense of community with other believers are but a few of of the reasons why the faithful believe. I know this because at one time I was a believer. I knew why I believed. However that isn’t enough. I think you’re more concerned with why they believe while I’m more interested in the truth of their beliefs.
There’s another point. I don’t really care what theists believe in or why they believe it. I care very much about how their beliefs effect me and my world. I care that the Catholic hierarchy is promoting the spread of AIDS because God hates condoms. I care that Meidyatama Suryodiningrat may get five years imprisonment for blasphemy. I care that my religious mother worries that I’ll be going to Hell because I’m an atheist. These are much more important to me than what some theologians think.
Since I consider theology to be the study of what comes out of theologians’ collective rectums, your and their dismissal of me means zero point zero to me. You’ll have to pound the desk much longer and harder to convince me that theology is anything other than pure, undiluted feces. Notice I’m not arguing against philosophy. That’s something that actually produces worthwhile results. But I do not hold theology and theologians in the same high regard you do.
Besides, it’s futile to argue whether angels dancing on the heads of pins are waltzing or doing the macarena when the existence of angels and other supernatural beings is in question. Once I’m convinced that angels exist then I’ll spend time studying their dance preferences.
Here’s a theological question for you. How often did human hearts have to be offered to Huitzilopotchli so the Sun would continue to rise in the morning? Have you spent the same effort studying Huitzilopotchlism as you have Christianity? Why is one particular flavor of theology more important and all others less so? Incidentally, the answer is four times a year at the solstices and equinoxes.
We think about disbelief. It’s just that you concern yourself about what theologians think whereas we concern ourselves with what believers believe and how it effects us. For you what religious belief is an intellectual exercise whereas we’re involved in the sociological and political aspects of belief.
I understand some of Aquinas’ arguments enough to recognize that many of them are based on petitio principii (assuming the premise). Aquinas was good enough at rhetoric to disguise his assumption of his conclusion but a careful reading of his “proofs of god” reveal this logical fallacy. He also liked special pleading. Why is his favorite god the one who created the universe, why not Brahma or the sons of Borr slaying the primeval giant Ymir? I realize that me not genuflecting at the altar of Thomism will only result in your scorn for my supposed ignorance but I can live with that.
While not pretending to Al Dente’s depth of knowledge of theology, I have studied some of the supposedly philosophical arguments for theism (Aquinas’s five ways, the ontological argument in a number of variants, Plantinga’s laughable “evolutionary argument against naturalism”, among others), and none of them appear sound. What is rather telling at a meta-level is that theologians themselves do not agree on which are sound and which are not – many, indeed, consider that none of them are. If any of them were sound, surely 2,000 years is long enough for theologians to have converged on one or more that they can agree to advocate?
Despite Eric Macdonald’s claims, theology is not a rational pursuit at all. It is happy to make use of the forms of rational argument, but it invariably seems to start by assuming that God (usually a very specific god) exists, then looking for persuasive arguments for that conclusion. That is not a path that can be expected to lead toward truth.
First of all, just to set John Morales mind at rest, I am not sure I understand Aquinas’ arguments precisely because they are difficult to understand. The Five Ways constitute a capsule summary of Aquinas’ arguments, but you must also read what he says in other places about being, and putting these together, the arguments are very complex and difficult to understand.
As to going with what ordinary believers believe, obviously this is the easiest way to go. It’s not hard to defeat arguments which are simplistic, and often ignorant of the detail the underlie those beliefs. Most believers take their beliefs on authority. This applies, by the way, even to those with scientific beliefs, since it is almost impossible for many laypersons without a great deal of training to understand the scienc behind their scientific beliefs about reality. However, if you take the rather simple beliefs of ordinary people, you cannot, simply by demolishing their reasons for holding them, demolish the beliefs themselves, something that new atheists seem not to appreciate.
So, when Al Dente says with a flourish, that “We both know there are bazillions of concepts of gods,” I have to say that we do not in fact know this. Most of the named gods that there are are existents amongst existents, and not in a real sense gods at all. They may be immortals, but they are typically not only anthropomorphic, but in some sense physical. So speaking knowledgeably about the Aztec god to whom sacrifices were made is to simply miss the point about what most of the so-called “higher” religions mean by the word ‘god’. (Al Dente’s suppose “theological” argument is not, in fact, theological, but anthropological.) Indeed, God is held to be transcendent (and so ultimately unknowable in his essence) in some sense, and yet encounterable in human experience. So when someone like Nick Gotts says that he has studied various arguments and “none of them appear sound,” he has not shown that they are not sound, but merely retailing his own experience, which is doubtless reliable (regarding his own experience of soundness or unsoundness), that none of them “appear” sound to him. Whether or not they are sound is another question altogether, and a much more difficult one. While I agree that Plantinga’s argument for the self-immolation of empiricism may seem unsound, it must be shown to be so. Answering, as well-known opponents do, that after all science works, is not an answer to Plantinga’s argument. Of course, science works. That’s precisely the problem, so far as Plantinga is concerned, and saying that it works doesn’t even begin to address his argument.
It’s a bit like anti-free will arguments. Jerry Coyne has a recent post with a TED talk about why society would be better off without the concept of free will, since then we would have to understand punishment in a completely different way. But this doesn’t even begin to address the question what it means to encourage people to accept no free will. What would that prove, since no having free will we have come up with the notion of free will and operate with it. Denying free will won’t get rid of the supposition of free will because this has arisen (according to the theory) out of a condition in which we do not have free will. Science also has arisen out of a situation where it seems that we know the truth, so of course, when we try to defend science, we will attempt to defend the truth of science. But truth in science is a lot like free will from the naturalistic point of view. They have arisen in a situation where neither truth nor free will have any objective confirmation, since both are simply the products of an evolutionary process.
Al Dente says that many of Aquinas’ arguments are based on begging the question. Of course, it would be nice to know what questions he has begged. He even has the temerity to say that “Since I consider theology to be the study of what comes out of theologians’ collective rectums, your and their dismissal of me means zero point zero to me.” This kind of blasé response is typical of new atheist rhetoric. Theology “comes out of theologians collective rectums,” regardless, apparently, of what they say or why they say it. Reading Aquinas is not the be all and end all of theology, by the way, and one wants to know what else Al Dente has read and understood. As for my dismissal of him, that is something I have not and would not do. No point dismissing persons. Arguments are what counts.
Of course, it is not silly to rebut the homophobic beliefs of Christians, based on their suppositions about what natural law or God’s commands might be. These are necessary rebuttals, since they affect real people, and real people suffer as a result of the questionable outworkings of theology. But this does not make fundamental theology easier to understand. There are good (and fairly simple reasons) why we cannot take the ethical outcome of some theology seriously, since absolutisms in theology or ethics are immediately questionable. The provisional nature of all knowledge is something that we need to understand. However, it is precisely the unprovisionality of so much atheist rhetoric than has led me away from the so-called new atheism. It is not appropriately provisional. For this reason theology is not only about an intellectual excercise. It affects deeply what people will ultimately believe, and form the foundation upon which (perhaps all unbeknownst to them) they believe it. Much theology is dismissable simply because it is not open to question, debate and revision.
But when you begin (or at least close to beginning) by saying that “You keep forgetting one very important fact. Gods don’t exist.” You dismiss right at the start that theology is impossible because it doesn’t have a subject matter, precisely the point at issue. I think, from the point of view of Aquinas, and most philosophers of religion, the gods (of the Greeks and Romans, for example) do not exist. They are more like angels in the Jewish and Christian tradition or like the Djinn in the Muslim tradition, subordinate spiritual beings. There seems very little basis for accepting that they exist. So Kali, Ganesh, Krishna, etc. cannot be individual beings — something which, in fact, is accepted in Hinduism. These are in some sense, the anthropomorphisms of aspects of Brahman, the one God. We can go either way here. We can keep playing games with aspects of religious anthropology, and speak of gazillions of gods. Or we can acknowledge that the gods of the nations are the way the divine is apprehended in the lives of individuals, that is, if there is a divine which can be so apprehended. But it is pointless to combine these things together by supposing that just because there have been gods many there cannot be anything to the idea of divinity, which is the subject matter of theology. Most religions have no had a theology, but mythologies. Some have acknowledged the mythology, but held them to be expressive of religious truth that transcends the mythologies themselves. We can’t begin, as you would like to, by assuming that there is no God. We have to take the argumentation seriously, see what theologians have done with the idea of God and the myths through which, it is claimed, God has made his approach to us. So we begin with arguments, not so much for the existence of God, since if God is God s/he does not exist, but has being, and gives being to all that is. As I say, I do not understand these arguments. You think they are dead simple to understand, but those who have addressed them, like JL Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism, Kenny’s The God of the Philosophers, and even Hart’s The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss in which his stated objective is to give an account of what it is that those who “believe in God” believe in. (This is a book, by the way, that Jerry Coyne has read and badly understood. I’m still trying.)
That’s exactly what I was saying last week. I “know” the earth orbits the sun while also rotating on its own axis, but I know that because I’ve been told it.
Eric – One thing I wonder (because I don’t understand it) about what you’re saying is what the connection is between the God of the theologians and the God of most believers, the anthropomorphic God, the angels-God. You seem to assume a connection or continuum between them but at the same time an important and perhaps radical difference. I still – perhaps this is new atheist of me – think it makes more sense to apply a different word to this whatever it is that is not pinned down by the beliefs of ordinary believers.
In other words aren’t we talking about different things? We new atheists are tired of and exasperated by the casual assumption that god-talk in the ordinary, church or mosque sense is perfectly reasonable and correct, and that we know all about that god and that we have to obey its known commands. That’s a lot of assumed knowledge that I don’t have, and I find the assumption…irksome.
Ophelia, let me begin by saying that I do not know (and do not really think) that there is a God (with a capital ‘g’). However, as I say this, I am not sure why I do not think this. I do not think I understand what theologians are arguing when they argue for the existence of a God. But whatever they are arguing for is something that is far more “rarefied” than the God that ordinary believers tend to believe in. This is not always the case, but more often than not, I think, in very much the same way that most people (well, at least very many people) believe in relativity and quantum mechanics. Most of those who think the Einstein was right have no idea what he was talking about. When I speak of the curvature of space, I have no real idea what this means, and why it is true to speak of space or space time as having curvature, which is supposed to explain how and why gravity works as it does.
Of course, the difference is that my beliefs about what scientists have discovered have very few consequences for how I live my life, though science impinges everywhere upon my life (in the technology I use, and in its effects on the environment, etc.), I do not look to science for guidance of my everyday affairs. So when I listen to, say, PZ Myers, in the final lecture of the Ottawa symposium, I think I understand what he was saying (even though it seemed very complex to me — or at least I thought I understood what he was saying) it hasn’t really stuck with me and has very little bearing upon how I go about my daily life. If it did I would be really in trouble, because I would really have no idea how to apply what I heard to what I do.
Religion is different. Religion seems to have begun as an apperception of what people recognised at the time as of transcendent significance (whether in dreams, through drugs, or other mind altering rituals or substances), not so much for their understanding of the world as such, but for the way they believed the should live their lives. So, if we study the anthropology of religion, we will encounter a host of ideas as to what transcendent entities exist, and how the existence of those entities had an impact on our self-conception and our idea of how we should live. Sometimes the outcomes are completely bizarre, but then our experience of the supposed transcendent can be bizarre as well. Anyway, there seemed to people then (as now) to be a commerce between that transcendent world and the world of everyday activity, so that some things came to seem particularly holy and good, and other things came to seem particularly profane and bad. The catalogue of the sacred and the profane in different cultures is very different, and obviously depends to a great extent upon social custom and taboo. Some of these customs and taboos came to be written into texts which gradually took on a sacred significance, and an aura of the sacred gathered around such texts, so they came to be set aside as in some sense particularly holy, and for this reason to be trusted and not questioned. The biggest religious problem that we have is that such texts often came to be understood as unrevisable, even though it should have been noticed, from the beginning, that they were, as all texts are, subject to interpretation (and therefore to revision). Gods are often associated, in the first instance, with these sacred texts, without anyone apparently noticing the historical processes by which they came to be. The Qur’an is a special instance of this, because, though it is obviously a crude pastiche of writings from different religious traditions, plus some exculpatory words addressed to the Prophet himself, which permitted him certain things denied to others, it is held to contain the very words of God. Some Christian fundamentalists make the same mistake, though there is nowhere in the text of the Bible where the Bible is claimed to contain God’s very words. Indeed, it is quite clear that the words are often those of other people, as when Saul or Abraham or Lot or Moses or Jezebel speak. The Qur’an deals with its contradictions by means of the doctrine of abrogation, which simply means that God changed his mind. The Bible nowhere provides a method for dealing with its contradictions, and therefore comes more clearly to be seen, as it is studied, to be written by human beings, whose judgement is as fallible as other human beings. There can reasonably be thought to be a development, through the Jewish scriptures, of the idea of God, from a tribal deity who commands acts of horrendous cruelty and destruction, to a God of compassion and love, concerned about justice, mercy and peace. But these developments are reasonably to be seen as a growing humanity amongst the people of Israel themselves (though even in the Torah there are indications of generosity and justice in commandments about, to take one example, the treatment of strangers in their midst).
Most religious belief is grounded in scriptures and other writings held to be sacred by association. So, when we speak of the ordinary belief of the average Christian, say, we must understand that their belief is grounded more in what they take to be authoritative pronouncement than in what can reasonably be said, based upon argument about the ground upon which such belief can be said to rest. In Hinduism, for example, theology at its most rarefied became non-theistic, and whatever was divine became a lot more like Tillich’s ground of being than Michaelangelo’s Great-grandfather in the sky. Much contemporary Christian theology is similar, and comes to rest in belief in a holy transcendence which cannot be known in itself, but only as it is encountered either in human relationship or in mystical prayer. The supposed commands of God are then seen as purely human creations which are held only in the light of such encounter. That is why much Christian moral theology is no longer an exposition of biblical laws and commandments, but an attempt to understand what implications the encounter with Christ (variously understood) has for our relationships with others. Richard Holloway, while still Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, wrote a book entitled Godless Morality: Keeping Religion out of Ethics, because, on this basis, that is, the basis that we encounter transcendence in our encounter with others, Christianity becomes a humanism (at the very least), although with the sense that this transcendence requires some metaphysical ground, which theologians call God. Natural law ethicists (and thus Roman Catholic ethics) tries to mix transcendence into our ethical understanding, but it is doubtful (just as Hume said) that it is possible to reach an ethical conclusion form claims about the laws governing our nature.
Unfortunately, the processes at work here are very confusing, especially to laypeople, who are often taught unreconstructed dogmatic Christianity based on the scriptures, without any of the nuances that modern theology brings to our understanding of what religion might be about in the final analysis. The new atheist response is to say that this so-called sophisticated theology is simply a way of hiding from the facts that science has revealed about the world. But this is, I think, wrong. Of course, science has inevitably changed what theology can say with any amount of reason, but the theological changes that have taken place in response to science have not been made in order to escape the consequences of science for religion, but to take science into account as a realm to which theology must of necessity pay attention. (The obviously doesn’t apply to fundamentalists, but fundamentalism, despite Jerry’s disagreement, is in fact a contemporary phenomenon, and a theological response to science, a response which is a dismissal of science in any respect in which it challenges dogmatic Christian beliefs.)
One problem with this is that very few clergy are capable of teaching modern theology and its consequences to the people they serve. It is a very difficult thing to do, and requires an incredible amount of confidence, as I have found out. But you would be surprised at how people welcome an understanding of religion which undermines the simplistic certainties they were taught as children, and bound to as adults. They can come to understand religion (not God, necessarily, but religion) as a human creation, and open to revision in the light of new knowledge, and of new moral demands. It is not difficult to undermine the anthropomorphisms, especially when it is obvious that those anthropomorphisms lead to what can reasonably be seen as immoral consequences. God talk has, in many respects, undergone a sea change, underway since at least the 18th century, but very often that change has not reached the level of the person in the pew. I know some of the difficulties of trying to introduce people to the changes that have taken place; but I also know that many welcome the change when they begin to understand it. So, I’m not sure whether we’re talking about different things, or talking about the same things in different ways. Perhaps it makes no difference, but what I oppose is those who pretend to know that theology is simply nonsense, simply because God does not exist in the simplistic way that they often suppose theologians hold this belief. Perhaps it makes no sense to speak of God in any sense, but that at least has to be shown. It cannot simply be taken for granted. At one level, at least, there are forms of liberal Christianity (and perhaps of other religious traditions too) that are quite consistent, at a human level, with what might be called secular humanism, even though they would choose to talk about these things in a religious context.
I do apologise for the length of this comment. I simply could not say what I wanted to say in fewer words, though I am sure there are some who could have done so.
Eric,
Let me attempt to adumbrate: religion is about how life should be lived, and because the (subjective) experience of the transcendent exists, there perforce must exist a transcendent realm, which theologians call God.
Therefore, God exists.
(Oh, and erudite followers of various major religions know this, and this is the God that they worship)
Eric,
I take it you figure I’m indulging in the fallacy of composition when I consider that if the pieces are flawed, so is the whole.
I see those as essentially etiolating the concept of God whilst preserving its purported relevance.
(No longer the unsophisticated uncaused causer, but rather a reification of causation itself.)
—
PS is the Pope a sophisticated theologian? 😉
John, as to your first response, it does not express in the least what I was trying to say. Read it again.
As to your second point: “I see those as essentially etiolating the concept of God whilst preserving its purported relevance.” You may see it that way, but it is part of traditional theology, and not just, as some people suggest, a response to science. The problem of the unknowable God, and yet the God of human encounter, is quite typical from early theologians. Indeed, it is present in the Jewish scriptures, where it is suggested that no one can see God and live, or no one has seen God at any time. The long tradition of apophatic theology is simply a byproduct of this, and a reflection on the fact that the nature of transcendent being cannot be captured in human concepts about existents.
And of course, you are guilty of the fallacy of composition. If you find a flaw in one part of the argumentation for God, it does not mean that the whole is somehow logically corrupt, which is probably why Aquinas offered five ways, five different arguments, and even those do not consider the totality of his arguments regarding the nature of being, in Being and Essence and elsewhere. And Aquinas is not the only one who has offered arguments that lead to transcendent being. When I studied philosophy (and theology, for that matter), whole swathes of philosophy were left out, primarily the medieval period.
My main point, however, is that the new atheism is uncritical, simplistic, and lacking in seriousness. It does not even make an effort to understand, and argues against the weakest case, by summarising complex arguments in terms that those whose arguments they are would dismiss the attempts as simply a failure even to try to understand. And then, having sallied forth to kill the dragon of “sophisticated theology (TM)” it resorts to blank dismissal, as though the philosophical/theological work has been completed. Since theology, like most rational pursuits, is an ongoing conversation, the idea that theology has been effectively laid low is a mere illusion. And now it is supposed that all that is necessary is a dismissal of the existence of God based on earlier supposed refutations, and the comfortable assumption that no more needs to be done. Of course, if, as is common, the refutation is scientistic, and merely claims that there is no empirical evidence for God, the argument is itself beside the point, since theologians have not in general ever supposed that there could be empirical evidence for God. Following Rosenberg, there is apparently no evidence for intentionality, belief, consciousness, meaning, purpose, etc., so the lack of empirical evidence for the existence of God seems to be in good (though rather bizarre company).
Is the pope a sophisticated theologian? I don’t think I said that he was. In any event, in the sense in which you are using the term, probably not, since “sophisticated theology (TM)” has become the acronym for useless and meaningless theorising. I am told that Benedict was a serious theologian, studied alongside Hans Kung, and taught at university, but years of acting as a dogmatic authority as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith no doubt had a corrosive effect on his ability to think freely.
But Eric…however simplistic the dismissals may be – and I think I get what you mean by that better than I would have a few years ago, thanks to my exasperation with simplistic (or just malicious) dismissals of feminism from many new atheists – the fact still remains that an unknowable god might as well be no god at all to most of us. To put it another way…if it’s unknowable, why shouldn’t we just dismiss it? In fact what else can we do about it?
Ophelia. “To put it another way…if it’s unknowable, why shouldn’t we just dismiss it? In fact what else can we do about it?”
Well, lots, to be fair. The apophatic way did not lead to saying nothing. I mean, how could it? To say that we can know nothing about God is not to say that God does not subsist as, in some sense, ultimate being, and this, philosophical theologians would say, is what in fact philosophical theology is about. And then, having established that the God who hides himself/herself/itself must do so, given the structure of being, it can be pointed out that people have experiences of what they call transcendence. This may not point to God, but some of the German philosophers of religion of the 19th century would point out that people do have experiences of absolute dependence (Schleiermacher) or of the numinous (Otto), experiences which in some sense transcend anything that is knowable by us in everyday experience, experiences which set aside times, places, and things as especially filled with holiness — enchanted, if you like. And many would try to explain what is missing when we reduce everything to the same plane of significance, how it somehow reduces life itself to a pallid, meaningless thing.
Now, mind you, I’m not saying that any of this is true, but it would be a bit foolish to deny that many people find significance and a sense of wholeness in the world seen under the aspect of holiness, undergirded by a fountain of being which keeps enriching the possibilities of life. Obviously, the problem of pain enters in here, but I keep recalling Rahner’s point when he asks whether stopping believing in God makes things any better? And he would also point out that it was because of their suffering that the God of Israel visited and redeemed the chosen people. That “chosen” people has some problems attached to it, but it doesn’t mean that people in their suffering do not feel visited and somehow upheld in their suffering by their faith in God. It doesn’t work for me, nor did it work for Elizabeth, but I have known many people who were lifted up in the midst of suffering by the faith that was in them. Never did quite understand it, but it is fair to say that religion and belief in God undoubtedly developed out of and in spite of suffering, not on account of any lack of it.
And so some people feel gripped by a sense of something more that will not let them go, and find that sense reaffirmed in the belief that there is, in the end, no choice but to suppose that there is some sort of ultimate being, or ground of being which explains existence itself. JR Lucas (the philosopher) thinks so, and he has said quite clearly that this ultimate being may of course not be personal. But it is undoubtedly the experience of being as personal that both Schleiermacher and Otto refer to when the speak of absolute dependence or the holy.
So, in this sense it might make good sense to speak of the deus absconditus, the ultimate being or ground of being which is a logical requirement for the existence of the universe in which we have come to be. And, moreover, it might be added, we do, at least, have personal consciousness, and it seems significant that the universe should have become conscious of itself in such as we. People often feel personally called to do things that others consider bizarre (like Schweitzer giving up the rich cultural heritage of which he was such a living part, and going off to Africa to bring what help he could to those who suffer), and that the call comes, in some sense, as a call to holiness, a call to reflect in one’s own life the transcendence one experiences. For example, to put it simply, I have always felt a strong call to ministry, a call that would not let me go, no matter what I did or resolved to do. I feel it still, and so it is doubly hard for me to think as an atheist, as I did for most of the sixties and seventies, and then as questions about God weighed so heavily with me when I knew that Elizabeth was suffering and dying, and when I realised that the church that I served still had not resolved, within its own expression of faith, what it was in Christianity that led to the Holocaust. But that call is still there, as in the sense of something more. That never leaves me, no matter how atheistical I become. And when I hear people dismiss religious beliefs in simplistic and crassly stupid ways (and they are legion), I simply wonder what is really true, ultimately, about our lives, and why we are here, whether there are reasons intrinsic to the nature of things, as Dworkin believed, that gives (or can give) meaning, structure and sense to life. Because so many atheists are so crude in their rejection of religion, and, for me, this reflects a crudeness at the heart of their lives. We have to make our own meaning, it is said, as though meaning can be developed completely independently of community. And when I listen to some of the things that Dawkins and others say about religious believers and about their beliefs, or about women and their right to equality and respectful community, I am convinced that life has to have more meaning than simply what I can spin out of my own imagination. I feel the need of a civilised community and its tradition. The new atheism does not provide for this, and those who speak most eloquently about it, like Julian Baggini, AC Grayling, and other humanists, already live within a tradition (and in some respects at the heart of it), but cannot so easily convey that tradition to others.
At least that is what the church at its best did, or tried to do. It provided a civilised community, a tradition spanning centuries, and a continuing conversation about how to live well. (It’s strange. In India the railways used to be run by Anglo-Indians, by children of British and Indian parents. Every large railway centre had its “railway colony,” as it was still known in Ratlam when I was in India. And at the centre of the colony there was an Anglican Church (and a school where the teaching was in English), the only church we could go to as children during the holidays (where English was spoken, so we could understand it — I was quite fluent in bazaar Hindi, but it didn’t go farther than that). It was a little island of British tradition in the midst of modern India, which is probably why I became an Anglican in the end. And I was always far more British than I was ever Canadian, and have always felt out of place in Canada, for all the years that I have lived here, except those I shared with Elizabeth.) Too often the church got (and gets) hung up on dogmatic issues, but sometimes it is hard to tell what is necessary in order to preserve the tradition, and what can be surrendered. But the church was a civil community in which life was taken with earnestness and sincerity, and where, I have to say, women were better treated than they are in the atheist community.
Wow! Did I just say all that?! It surprised me, because that’s not what I was going to say, merely to point out the everyday sorts of things that could be said in response to the idea that God is and must be, in the very nature of the case, somehow absolutely transcendent. Everything else, as Tillich would say, is idolatry. I have just finished a book by James Carroll, entitled Christ Actually, which does go into some detail regarding the divine transcendence, but also about the divine immanence as well. He takes his departure from Bonhoeffer’s question: “Who is Christ actually for us today?” And remember how Bonhoeffer ended up with a religionless Christianity. Anyway, nuff said. But these questions will always concern me, and those who simply scoff at religion (often in quite scatological terms) simply haven’t even begun to understand it, or its attractions, and only someone who can understand it can provide a rational counter to it. I’m not sure that’s me, but it sure isn’t the new atheists. I have given up reading most of their blogs (or websites), because they are a bit like a broken record, and still haven’t learned anything new.
Eric,
I assure you I perused your comment, but fair enough.
I grant that’s true if the flawed elements of the argument are redundant to the whole, and indeed would make it more difficult to understanding the whole.
I find it interesting you specify argumentation for God, as if that were a special case.
As a New Atheist, I don’t think God is a special case.
—
[New Atheist]
I am one for whom religion holds no attraction (quite the contrary).
Existential angst?
It seems to me a foolish and simplistic wonder: Meaning is only relevant to a perceiving consciousness; obviously, our lives have meaning to ourselves and to those with whom we interact or affect (even at a remote, such as someone reading an obituary).
Outside that, whence any meaning to life?
You’re essentially wondering if you’re a non-player-character in a cosmic 4-D game in which Jesus was a Player.
Sorry, John, but your comments leave me cold. Individualism of the type you think natural (in fact the only possible source of meaning) is a recent phenomenon, and hasn’t provided meaning for millions. Indeed, as a social, communicative species, it’s difficult to see how it could. Existential angst, which you simply ask as a question is a very real aspect of life, as those who grew up in the shadow of the Second World War might testify. Camus’ question, arising from this angst, is what he considers the primary question of philosophy: suicide. Whether, like Sisyphus, we should continue to roll to rock to the top of the hill, only to start over again, is still a very real question. Or whether there is a common task upon which we can be engaged which actually provides meaning for life (not my life, or yours, but life itself). The new atheism does not attract (me) precisely because it is not serious about life. Life becomes but a consumer dream without any unifying centre.
You say you don’t think that God is a special case, and yet you base your life on a repudiation of religious belief! You seem simply not to realise how deep in the religious world view your life is already steeped. If, in fact, God were unimportant, as you seem to think, then atheism itself is unimportant too. At least Christopher Hitchens took religion with a kind of personal seriousness when he spoke of himself as an anti-theist, for to be an anti-theist is in fact to give to the questioning of religion and to religious questions the seriousness that they have traditionally had. The new atheism thinks that it can escape the implications of the religious world view simply by scorning it, when, in fact, despite its secularity (and because of it too), the new atheist world view is in fact saturated with religious concern. Indeed, the morality of humanism is deeply influenced by the Christian tradition within which it developed. Many new atheists claim to be humanists without the slightest idea what humanism involves. You seem to think you can escape the cultural influences which saturate our world view and which in fact almost wholly derive from Christianity and Judaism, which is why your denials seem so unutterably banal.
That is why some Christians have dismissed the new atheism as lacking in seriousness, and I am afraid I have found it lacking in seriousness too. Individual resolutions (or dissolutions) of religious belief cannot provide a world view, which inevitably include political, ethical, and communal structures. Jerry Coyne keeps speaking about Scandinavia as though it were some sort of secular paradise, but underlying the order of Scandinavian societies are the national churches of those countries, which still celebrate, for the majority, the key transitions in life: birth, adulthood, marriage and death; thus showing the degree to which the social consciousness of those societies are still shot through with religious presuppositions. The Russian Communists tried to provide alternatives to Christian or Jewish rites of passage, but the Orthodox Church was always in the background, and was permitted to come to the front for the great patriotic battle against Nazism, and now plays a vital part in the life of the Russian federation, even though, because it did not go through any of the pangs of modernity (at least since 1917) is a highly conservative, not to say regressive force, in the country’s life. What is wrong with the new atheism is that it does not take seriously the fact that life and the meaning of life is to a great degree a social and communal thing, not something entirely individual, where deracinated individuals try to make sense of their lives, without any contribution from or reference to communal norms, since perceiving consciousnesses are, at the very least, social consciousnesses, and language itself, which provides the groundwork for consciousness and self-consciousness could not exist without society.
I don’t recognize your portrait of new atheism, Eric, at least not this portrait of it as wholly individualistic and denying of the social and communal.
And I don’t understand the idea that the social and communal have to depend on religion.
To come back to the post topic, there is no denying that, mainly due to his New Atheist corpus, Richard Dawkins is highly influential and popular. The God Delusion clearly articulated a position towards religion that resonated with many, flawed as its merits may be. That’s the position that became known as “the new atheism”.
Eric, I am more sanguine about the future of humanity than you; I think humanity is still in the primitive stages of development, and that future generations will see today’s institutional and cultural religiosity as we see that of the European Middle Ages.
Ophelia, my portrait of the new atheism is based on the increased emphasis on naturalism as an orthodoxy. Since this effectively eliminates anything that we might think of as human, and relegates all subject matter that is not the product of empirical observation and confirmation to the realm of not-knowledge, I see no other possibility than a pretty confined individualism. Perhaps the new atheism will at some point grow up, but I am not confident. To suppose that the only rational argumentation is confined to science and its investigations is to exclude everything that could make for community. My impression of the new atheism as irreconcilable with any kind of communalism lies there. If your view is different from this (and the comment stream on most new atheist blogs and websites reaffirms this for me) then you have a very different interpretation of the limits of the new atheism as demonstrated by its public face. Dawkins wrote long ago that what makes human beings different is that we can oppose the selfish replicators, but the new no free will orthodoxy has put an end to that bit of sanity, and I do not see much hope for more of the same.
I am not sanguine about our future John, mainly because science is unstoppable, and, although only a narrow spectrum of what can be known, now determines most of what happens around the world. Science has discovered anthropogenic global warming, but it seems to me unlikely that science will be able to change things in time to avoid disaster — we are, after all, still just a gene or two away from gorillas — and the fact that nuclear war is still a very real possibility in a very divided world, along with America’s prevarication over Iran’s nuclear intentions and potential, is, I think, an added danger to which there are no obvious solutions just now. Add to that an apocalyptic Islam and you have the recipe for global disaster. We seem to think, because there is still an island of sanity in the world, that the future is as rosy as so many of the new atheists seem to assume (in their innocence). I do not have that kind of naive confidence in the future. And the new atheism’s ability to form humane communities is perhaps one of its most serious drawbacks. Instead of reaching out towards the most intelligent and humane amongst the religious, the new atheism persists in its attacks on religion as a single thing, without making any distinctions between types of religious believers, thus excluding from possible solutions to global problems, far more people than new atheists themselves can muster to provide hope for the future. It’s almost as though the new atheism is a small gnostic group with its own idea (entirely scientific in orientation) as to how to redeem the times. Not enough in my view. Yes, I am very lacking in hope for the future of civilisation.
Eric – I see what you mean now. I don’t think I agree with all of it, but at least I get what you mean. I’ve been arguing something similar lately, motivated by constantly seeing claims that having any kind of moral or political commitment equals irrationality.
Yes, I think you do get it, and at least, Ophelia, agree with parts of it, for the claim that having moral or political commitments is irrational is precisely what a strict scientific (eliminative) naturalism implies. Human communities create the objective conditions for moral of political commitments, but that is not possible on eliminative naturalist grounds, for all you have in those terms, when push comes to shove, is atoms and molecules in motion. Meaning, purpose, beliefs, decisions — indeed all intentional language — becomes meaningless; which is why it is so silly listening to people say that if we would only stop believing in free will we could create a more just society. That word ‘create’ is precisely what free will denies, and I think the new atheism is hooked on this kind of eliminative naturalism. Indeed, rather interestingly, science itself becomes impossible in eliminative terms. I think the whole new atheist project has become incoherent. Humanism, as AC Grayling clearly states in one of his books, depends upon free will, for only if we have free will can we develop communities — ‘develop’ being the intentional language attached to the idea of free will, along with decision, projects, even hopes and fears. Scientism is a philosophical loser, I’m afraid, and I cannot see how the new atheism developed by people like Dennett (though of course he defends compatibilist free will), Dawkins (who now remains silent on the matter), Jerry Coyne et alium, can provide even the rudiments for human community.
Eric (to Ophelia):
A fallacy of division. Atoms and molecules themselves don’t merit intentionality, but certain arrangements of large aggregates of them do.
You’re seriously claiming new atheists hold that all intentional language is meaningless?!
Not all, John, but many new atheists tend to believe that intentionality is meaningless (though they become more or less incoherent when they make the attempt to express those beliefs). Jerry Coyne, for one, thinks that we are just bags of molecules (as he has put it from time to time). Alex Rosenberg thinks that intentional language is, in fact, an epiphenomenon (and thus just an illusory shadow of physical events). The claim that we do not have free will is effectively to empty intentional language of meaning, and with this goes the whole idea of meaning and purpose in human life.
Besides, no large aggregate of atoms and molecules as such merit (to use your peculiar word) intentionality. Intentionality is a mystery that is not understood, or at least it is not understood yet (some philosophers argue attempts to comprehend intentionality would lead to an infinite regress (since only by an intentional act can intentionality be understood). Indeed, only minds have intentionality, but what are minds? Aggregates of molecules: this is the usual answer given by the scientistic new atheists (not all new atheists are scientistic, but it is certainly a growing trend). But it is not just large aggregates of molecules that constitute the grounds for (or merit — please notice how odd a word this is to describe the conditions of) intentionality, since the universe might be thought of as a large aggregate of atoms and molecules, and does not obviously possess intentionality. Needless to say, speaking about a fallacy of division (you do like named fallacies, don’t you?) is not sufficient to dismiss arguments dealing with the problem of intentionality.
Clearly intentionality is related to the brain and brain complexity, but the brain itself does not possess intentionality. It is not at all clear that studying the complexity of the brain will in fact produce a clear understanding of intentionality, since it requires intentionality to devise theories about how the brain produces intentionality, and thus the argument (or demonstration) may indeed be circular. I don’t pretend, by the way, to be an expert in the philosophy of mind, but it certainly requires a fair amount of acquaintance with philosophy of mind even to begin to speak intelligibly about such things.
As to all new atheists holding that “all intentional language is meaningless” all I can say is that this is the trend of those who are leaders in new atheism. Dennett, for example, suggests that there is an explanatory stance called “the intentional stance,” meaning that we can understand certain natural states if we use intentional language, which implies that the theoretical language applied when we use the intentional stance to understand certain aspects of reality is not in itself intentional. This is, so far as I can see, desperately confused.
Science began by abstracting from all intentional language or intentional states. That is what makes science such an eminently controlled and controllable type of enquiry. But then, to reverse the scientific procedure of investigation and apply it to ourselves, as those who think about and examine the world scientifically, thus excluding the application of intentional language to human beings (and many other animals), we effectively exclude intentionality from the account we give of human beings, reducing our knowledge of the human to purely descriptive language. Hence behaviourism. We do not have beliefs as such (which are intentional), but behave in certain ways (non-intentional), or have the disposition to behave in such ways (non-intentional) and so beliefs, meaning, purpose, choice, etc. (intentional) reduce to various kinds of behaviour. I think this is incoherent, since, in fact, the scientist who is examining human behaviour cannot exclude intentionality from his own activity as a scientist.
To go back to your last but one, Eric –
Whether it can or not, I notice that the people you mention all partake of community – they’re all in fact creatures of community. Without community none of us would be aware of any of them. They all do community things. Universities are communities. Blogs can become communities, and Coyne’s and Dawkins’s certainly have.
I know that’s tangential to what you’re saying, but the thing is, it seems to me that they all live as if free will is real even if they do argue (and thus in some sense “believe”) it isn’t.
Me, I just avoid the subject altogether, because whatever the arguments are I can’t believe it’s an illusion, however epiphenomenal it may be.
Aren’t a good many new atheists like that? Dennett & Dawkins & Coyne aren’t the sum total of new atheism.
Thank FSM!
Yes indeed.
After reading Eric Macdonald’s post @25 I realized I had to leave this conversation for a while or else I would lose my temper. It’s very frustrating to argue with someone who isn’t arguing with what I say but rather is arguing about something completely different. The only saving grace for Eric is that I think he doesn’t have a clue about what I’m actually arguing. Perhaps it’s my fault for not expressing myself properly. Perhaps it’s his fault for living in a theological ivory tower and refusing to consider the practice of religion instead of the theory. A comment by Yogi Berra is apropos: “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”
Suffice to say that Eric appears solely concerned with theology as the basis for understanding religion whereas I couldn’t care less about theology but instead concern myself with how religion effects real people. Eric and I are talking past each other because I don’t give a damn about theology and he doesn’t care about the real world.
[clarification]
Eric,
I should have written “merit the ascription of intentionality” rather than “merit intentionality”. Also, note the qualification; it was an existence claim, not an universal claim.
(When my dog picks up his toy and comes up to me with waggling tail, I’m pretty sure he wants to play)
In passing, you’re guessing when you ascribe to me a predilection for naming fallacies, rather than for avoiding needless circumlocution.
Finally, I made no effort to “dismiss arguments dealing with the problem of intentionality”; rather, I asserted that it can be ascribed to certain entities yet not to their components — i.e. it’s an emergent property.
Eric above,
I haven’t believed in any idea of cosmic meaning or of cosmic purpose in human life since I was around 15 years old, and found teleology silly even before that.
I get that many people apparently perceive a need for such externalities*, but reasoning from the existence of a need that what is needed perforce exists is fallacious reasoning.
(This is, I suppose, an instance of your New Atheist crude and unsophisticated dismissal of such mysteries)
—
* Though how those people find this belief somehow reassuring is beyond me; I merely observe they apparently do.
[meta + OT]
Al Dente @46,
Two things:
1. I wish you’d addressed that to Eric himself in the first person rather than to the readership in the third person, so that not only did you not lose your temper, you’d also not have been rude.
2. The context here (as introduced by Eric) is the merit of the New Atheism’s dismissal of sophisticated theology; a context within which the real world is indeed an irrelevance.
John @49
If you reread Eric’s post @25 you’ll notice that he referred to me in the third person. Also misconstruing my arguments is hardly polite.
[meta]
Al Dente @50, I should have written “second person” rather than “first person”, actually. A careless error, that.
—
Anyway, you might not believe that Eric’s thesis is the unsustainability of the New Atheism’s philosophical stance and its failure to address sophisticated theology (which restricts the applicability of his contention about the importance of ordinary believers’s beliefs), but I don’t see how me noting that is a misconstrual of your argument rather than a disputation of its soundness.
FWIW, I endorse your thesis that the pragmatics of religiosity’s instantiations are of more relevance than their philosophical bases.
Ophelia, while I agree with you (and John Searle, and others) that we probably cannot live as though free will is not true, the fact is that many new atheists retain a theoretical commitment to determinism. All their homiletic language points to free will (you can scarcely harangue people for believing in free will, if they have no choice in the matter), yet their theoretical standpoint is one of deterministic behaviourism. This makes a nonsense of any idea they might have of community. You say the new atheists do have community, but my point is more about social or cultural community, the kind of living community which gives meaning and purpose to people’s lives. Sorry if I did not make this clear. So internet ‘communities’ don’t really qualify, nor do the friendships between say, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins. Indeed, the way the internet is shaping up, it begins to look as though it will at best become a congeries of solitudes, reaffirming their beliefs to each other and condemning the beliefs of others. And when they start talking about society as a whole — as when the recommendation is made that a society that did not believe in free will would be a better society, because it would not so readily resort to forms of retributive punishments — they end up making proposals that would, in fact, I believe, be destructive of society (and therefore community). If I cannot hold you to account for, say, breaking a promise (since you were determined so to do), then the possibility of community between us is seriously diminished. I have noticed that you simply avoid the issue, but it is a fundamental one, and it is becoming normative for prominent new atheists to take this point of view. I notice, of course, that Dennett is the odd man out here, but, given his understanding of how to understand intentionality, it is not clear to me that his convictions regarding compatibilist free will are consistent with other aspects of his philosophical psychology.
Of course, as Al Dente notes, Dawkins and Coyne are not the sum of the new atheism, but they (and those with similar opinions — like Harris) have tended to set the tone. As a philosopher by training, I find the new atheism simply inconsistent with what seems to me to be the philosophical consensus. Along with the fact that the new atheism is determined not to take philosophy seriously, these are amongst the reasons that led me to take my departure. The developing orthodoxy that I encountered from everyday new atheists was such as to remind me of the worst aspects of religious dogmatics: a refusal, and even an inability, to discuss the issues involved at a reasonable level of competence. So, when Morales and Al Dente think that demolishing the beliefs of ordinary religious people is sufficient to demolish the rationality of religious belief altogether, without discussion (and I see the same kind of thing in Coyne, Grayling, Dawkins, Harris, and others), I realise that I am no longer in the company of those who truly seek to understand, but have made up their minds already, even though there have been some fairly distinguished religious responses to the new atheism. I once did a piece on Ed Feser’s The Last Supersition, and was quickly put in my place by arguments that I knew to be more cogent than my own. But Ed Feser’s Scholastic Metaphysics, Hart’s The Existence of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, contain very close argumentation that at least has to be met by those who wish to oppose them. So far, the new atheist response to those books is sadly elementary, and, in most cases (especially regarding Hart) entirely tangential. Hart’s aim in the book cited is to identify the concept of the Christian God (and to associate that concept with Buddhist, Hindu, and other concepts of high gods), not to prove the existence of that God (though he alludes to such proofs as he goes along), and yet most of the response so far made by the new atheists is that he did not prove the existence of God, and that there is, after all, no empirical evidence for such existence in any event (when it is clear that the God identified by Hart is not such as to provide empirical evidence, and such a proof was not his intention, as he states early in the book). In other words, the book is being read through a lens of already formed opinions, and those who have commented on it so far seem signally ill-equipped to deal with its argumentation.
I appreciate the discussion that I have had in this comment thread, but nothing that I have so far heard leads me to alter my opinion of the new atheism and its presuppositions. (That is not aimed at you, Ophelia, since you have not responded to most of what I have said.) I note Al Dente’s comment that he decided not to comment since he “had to leave this conversation for a while or else [he] would lose [his] temper” (a totally astonishing admission!). Later he goes on to say that I misconstrued his arguments. I may have, but since he did not tell me how I had misconstrued them, and since I certainly did not do so intentionally, there was nothing impolite or rude implied in anything that I wrote (although John Morales suggests that Al Dente had himself been rude, although I had not noticed). In addition, in response to John, let me just say that I am not so concerned about what he disparagingly calls “sophisticated theology,” but with what may be called philosophical theology. So far, to repeat, the new atheist response to philosophical theology (and Dawkins makes a crude attempt to dismiss it in his book, so addressing it cannot be thought to be irrelevant to the new atheist project) has been almost juvenile in its achievements. However, enough for now. I do not think I can carry this discussion much further.
I will mention just one thing more. When, John Morales, you suggest that not understanding the complex arguments of some philosophical theology is simply a measure of my own intelligence (or something of the sort), let me just point out that these arguments are exceptionally complex, depend upon many years of training, and, like other philosophical arguments, demand extremely close reading (all of which, at my age, will probably be left more or less unfinished), my lack of understanding is in any case an expression of the provisionality of all knowledge, and a refusal to take a position that is not adequately backed up by evidence (empirical or rational). Humility in making claims to knowledge is always appropriate, and the new atheism would gain by a little more of it.
Eric MacDonald @52
Perhaps you missed my previous statement in this thread that theology is based on what some people think an imaginary and supposedly unknowable being thinks, wants and demands. Christian theology has its ultimate roots in the ruminations of bronze-age shepherds afraid of the dark. Hindu theology goes back further to neolithic times. But all of theology, every single bit of it, without exception, is based on exactly nothing but the imaginary and the fantastic. Frazer’s The Golden Bough makes this very point.
Also, I keep missing your explanation as to why you so cavalierly dismiss what ordinary common or garden Christians (and other theists) believe in favor of what some ivory tower thinkologist pulls out of his rosy red rectum. I realize that Greta Christina is a Gnu Atheist and therefore completely and utterly unworthy of your slightest consideration but she wrote an article: “The Big Guns: Greta Answers Some Theologians” which shows that many theologians are preaching the same thoughts as the lumpenproliteriat Christians you so thoroughly disdain.
One comment on Greta’s thread makes an interesting point:
Eric (feel free to ignore me if you don’t want to continue this, but I want to write it down anyway) – the thing about just dismissing religion without engaging with sophisticated arguments for it, is this: one has to choose one way or the other, and if religion just has no purchase on us, what else can we do?
Ok it’s unsophisticated, but I still find it decisive that I couldn’t believe in a god if I tried. I can’t find any reason to believe in a god, so for me that amounts to a reason not to. It’s crude, yes, but I don’t see any reason to do anything else.
Ophelia, that’s fine. That’s equivalent to saying (as some do) that they believe in a God and can’t imagine not believing in one. What I am objecting to is the claim that the case has been decisively made. Dawkins pretends to do that in The God Delusion. If he had just said (to use William James’ language) that religious belief is simply not a live option for him, that would have been fine. But since he took himself to be demolishing arguments which have been laid out in such torturous detail, arguments which, in all honesty, he simply misunderstands, whatever their justification, he has a duty to do this in a responsible way. I suspect that that is what is in Jerry Coyne’s new book (coming out next May, I believe), which is entitled (I think) Faith and Fact, which will show (I think, as the title suggests) that he thinks of religion as a scientific hypothesis, and he has set out to demolish that hypothesis. But it isn’t, of course, a scientific hypothesis. Even early believers must have known that their creation stories were myths, since (at least in the biblical account) two independent and quite divergent stories are told.
There’s nothing unsophisticated about saying that religion simply doesn’t have any street cred for you. What is unsophisticated is to pretend to enter the philosophical conversation, and believe that that’s sufficient to establish your negative conclusions regarding the conclusions of philosophical theology; and that is in fact what many of the new atheists have done. You have, quite justly, placed this aspect of the matter behind you, and have concentrated on matters of social import, without adverting to religion except insofar as religion shows itself to be guilty of offences against humanity. That, in itself, calls into question almost all institutional expressions of religion, for which there is not a lot to be said, except that, in some sense, those who live life with a religious sensibility will want to have relationships with those who have similar views and experiences to their own. This may find institutional expression, but, like any other institution, religious institutions need to be placed on notice that it is improper to use religious belief as the basis for absolute political or social authority. Religious institutions, like our political and economic and educational (including scientific) institutions need to be criticised scrupulously for their offences against the rights of human beings and the protection of the biosphere upon which we all depend, and on which later generations will also depend (if there is anything left over from our particularly voracious appetite for MORE!). My problem is that the scientific fraternity, that seem to comprise the greater part of the number of leading new atheists and their acolytes, seem not to be aware that their own position is as much an ideology, and is as capable of as much harm, as religious ideologies. The problem with religion is not religious belief as such, which can be quite benign, but religion as an ideology with political and moral pretensions that cannot be disputed. Science, incidentally, plays a similar role, and is similarly involved in much of the harm that is being done now to the environment and to relationships amongst nations, and scientists themselves are often at the working edge of projects whose harm is increasingly becoming a threat to the planet.
Al Dente, I’m not going to respond in detail on your comment — I think I’ve already said enough — but I do have to say that Greta Christina’s point is simply silly. This one:
In my own experience this is not true, and many people have questions about their religious beliefs, and want to consider them thoughtfully. The fundamental purpose of theology is to try to speak the truth about God, and the implications of belief in God (and the meaning of the word ‘god’ here is not as simple as quoting the 39 Articles — as Dawkins is prone to do). Whether that is in fact possible is another issue altogether. To the extent that theology has become dogmatic, so that it is followed without question just because it is spouted by someone in authority, theology is a con-game. A lot of theology is like that. Perhaps most theology is like that. But that does not mean that there is no place for a philosophical theology that will remain appropriately critical of what is made, by dogmatics, to seem superficially reasonable. The best theology today, in my view, is done by fringe members of the guild, people like Don Cupitt, Richard Holloway, Gordon Kaufmann, and others, who have been prepared to subject traditional theology to a rigorous course of deconstruction. In terms of that kind of theology, theology becomes very much a human creation, and, indeed, as Christianity was in its infancy, I think, brings religion down to earth in a way that leaves no room for the kinds of hypertrophy that has afflicted classical dogmatics. (‘Dogma’ is a bit of a swear word in theology nowadays, although fundamentalists, and great ecclesiastical institutions tend to live in its shade.) At the same time I need to say that some of the philosophical arguments that are commonly used to demonstrate the being, if not the existence, of God, are ones that I do not fully understand, and not because, as John Morales so kindly suggested, that I am simply stupid, but because they are indeed, exceedingly difficult, and are such as to convince some philosophers whom I admire. So I think, having taken my leave of the new atheism, I have to accept the word agnostic to express my view, even though AC Grayling thinks this is simply a misleading way of speaking about atheism. But then I think AC Grayling’s arguments against the being of God are often overly simplistic and just as often based on a misunderstanding (or a series of them).
Eric – ah, ok, that clarifies. You’re right, I’ve always carefully avoided making any claims about decisively disproving the existence of god, because it’s way too much to claim.
Eric MacDonald @56
I admit that I’ve never heard of Cupitt, Holloway, Kauffmann et al, but so what? It’s sheer pretense to claim that theology isn’t dogmatic. As I’ve said before and you keep ignoring, all of theology is the study of something that doesn’t exist except in the imagination. That’s why there’s so many different religions and so many cult, sects and schisms in each religion. Every believer has different ideas concerning what “God” or “the Gods” are all about. Have you ever noticed that when someone claims to know the thoughts of God that God has exactly the same opinions and prejudices as his mouthpiece. Do you think this is a coincidence?
I personally don’t offer evidence to disprove the existence of gods qua gods. I ask for evidence that gods exist. So far nobody, not even the most sophisticated theologian using the most arcane, enigmatic, cryptic bafflegab, has come close to presenting such evidence. It’s obvious to me that certain gods cannot exist, Yahweh being one of them, because of logical contradictions in the definitions and descriptions given for these gods. Perhaps what’s obvious to me is too unsubtle to be obvious to you. You appear to prefer ambiguous, esoteric abstruseness.
If someone presents evidence that at least one god exists, then I’ll accept the existence of gods. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that evidence. Christian theologians have had over 2000 years to come up with evidence and have utterly failed. There is a man I work with who is a Hindu priest (he’s a Brahmin who went to a Hindu seminary for several years). He admits that there’s no actual evidence for the existence of any of his gods. Hindus fall back on the same “ya gotta believe” faith that Christians rely on. Any faith argument is based on presupposition. If I don’t accept that gods exist then I’m not accepting an argument that gods exist based on the premise that gods exist.
In short, if you want me to believe in your god, then you’ve got to show your god exists. And even if I might accept that a god exists, that doesn’t mean that god is worthy of worship.
[OT]
Eric (to Al Dente),
I suspect you have no such doubts about the God that demands its tribe snip off the foreskins of male children*. Surely you’re not agnostic towards it?
You did write: “I do not know (and do not really think) that there is a God (with a capital ‘g’)”.
(That’s ostensibly atheistic 😉 )
* A point Al Dente also made in his response.
—
I put it to you that the God to which you are agnostic on the basis of philosophical theology is a Deistic rather than a Theistic deity, and inform you that I don’t concur with the claim that the philosophical theology practiced by (say) the Pope relates to such a deity.
—
In passing, I am curious regarding whether you think that the only possible — presumably by abductive reasoning — entity that can account for “an apperception of what people [recognise] as of transcendent significance (whether in dreams, through drugs, or other mind altering rituals or substances)” has to be some sort of deity rather than, say, some sort of natural process or even perhaps a supernatural yet non-volitional process.
PS Eric, I certainly did not intend to belittle either your intelligence or your philosophical nous. I was overly crude.
Sorry.
Oh dear! I had promised myself not to write again on this comment stream. My comments already weigh in at slightly over 10,000 words! Nevertheless, there are a few things left to be said.
First, to Ophelia. Regarding our last exchange, I was just reading Mark Lilla’s book The Stillborn God, and had just come to the following remark at the time of the exchange in question. Speaking about Hobbes, he writes:
The problem is, of course, that the new atheists did not want to change the subject. What is unique (if not altogether) about the new atheists is that they decided to challenge the authority of religion on its own ground, and so claim to have responded to its own arguments by refuting them. I don’t think they have. Indeed, I think that most new atheists have a fairly simplistic understanding of religious belief that does not stand up to scrutiny when compared with the religions themselves, and especially those religions which have used philosophical reasoning to explain, if not to justify, their beliefs.
Regarding Al Dente’s latest comment. You say that “I admit that I’ve never heard of Cupitt, Holloway, Kauffmann et al, but so what? It’s sheer pretense to claim that theology isn’t dogmatic.” That’s a bit like saying that someone’s book is simply nonsense without bothering to read it first. If you read Cupitt, Holloway, or Kaufmann, you would see clearly that their theology is not dogmatic, and that your claim that they are dogmatic is in fact dogmatic. So far as evidence that at least one god exists, you will have to explain what you mean by the term ‘evidence.’ (Some new atheists expect a kind of evidence that theologians themselves seldom (or, perhaps, do not typically) claim for their beliefs.) The evidence for the truth of the Pythagorean theorem is its logical place in a system of axioms and premises. The evidence that Einstein’s theory is true was its fulfilling the prediction that light tended to bend in the presence of gravitational fields. The evidence that in Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities Sydney Carton, by deception, took the place of Charles Darnay (the aristocrat Charles Evrémonde) at the guillotine because of his unrequited love for Lucie Manette, is in the story itself. The evidence for the existence of God may be the soundness of certain arguments which claim to show that necessarily there is a transcendent being upon which the contingent being of the world depends for its existence. Since you do not think reading anything that might tend to prove this (or other things) worthwhile, perhaps you would be better off simply accepting that you do not believe in a god, and leave it at that.
Regarding John Morales. As to specific religious imperatives, since I claim not to know (and not even to think) that there is a God, it is clear that I could not, on the basis of my lack of knowledge (and doubts) accept such imperatives. As to my doubts being about a deistic god, obviously I don’t know; but I think my questions are directed more towards a non-deistic (a theistic) god, for such a god is the only one belief in which would be consequential for my life. Introducing the notion of abductive reasoning here is irrelevant, since abductive reasoning goes from observation to hypothesis and then on to confirmation or disconfirmation (which is the scientific method). It is of course possible to go from supposed experiences of God (observation), to the conviction that the God of your experience has being and is capable of encounter in human experience. I think such reasoning would be very hazardous unless there were other grounds for such a belief, which I assume would be in the form of some sort of metaphysical reasoning. There is, of course, the reverse possibility, that an encounter with the divine (considering that hypothetically to be possible) makes metaphysical reasoning quite irrelevant. Thomas Aquinas, towards the end of his life, is said to have had a mystical experience in comparison with which he counted his theological endeavours to seem just so much straw.
Regarding my remark about John Morales’ comment on my finding the arguments for God difficult to understand — “as John Morales so kindly suggested” — it was a joke, John. I was not offended. Indeed it is quite hard to offend me, though Al Dente’s language, if I may say so, I occasionally find more offensive than any personal comment about my abilities or lack thereof. Crude remarks about theologians come off as just that — crude — and do not do much to affirm one’s own standing as a person capable of reasoning.