Lots of you have been alerting me to this op-ed in the NY Times, but I have to confess that I read it, and Richard A. Schweder makes no sense at all in his “Atheists Agonistes” article. His conclusion seems to be that we should stop “waging intellectual battles over the existence of god(s)”, but everything preceding that point doesn’t seem to make any kind of sensible case for much of anything. Here’s the heart, I think; he’s wondering why we’re seeing this resurgence of godlessness as a literary genre:
Why, then, are the enlightened so conspicuously up in arms these days, reiterating every possible argument against the existence of God? Why are they indulging in books — Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation, and Richard Dawkins’s God Delusion — in which authors lampoon religion or rail against the devout under the banner of a crusading atheism? Books dictated or co-written by God sell quite well among the 2.1 billion self-declared Christians and 1.3 billion self-declared Muslims of the world. What explains the current interest among secularists in absolutely, positively establishing that the author is a fraud?
The most obvious answer is that the armies of disbelief have been provoked. Articulate secularists may be merely reacting to the many recent incitements from religious zealots at home and abroad, as fanatics and infidels have their ways of keeping each other in business.
A deeper and far more unsettling answer, however, is that the popularity of the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society that it is not the story of religion but rather the story of the Enlightenment that may be more illusory than real.
He then describes, quite reasonably I think, that the Enlightenment hasn’t exactly been a triumph for reason, and that we’re still seeing the same ol’ religious divisions and irrationalities. That’s quite true, but it’s strange to see the atheists’ motivations described as a result of our insecurity about secularism, as if it’s different from a reaction to the religious zealotry. Complaining that we are unhappy about seeing our myth of a total victory for reason in the 18th century falling apart is a classic straw man, since I don’t know anyone on my godless side of the fence who thinks we’re in anything other than an ongoing battle that has never been won (or even, may never be won; isn’t the struggle between our rational and irrational natures always going to be something every individual has to wrestle with?)
I know Schweder is a proponent of relativistic approaches to culture, but I just don’t see the point of writing an op-ed that expresses no opinions other than that, well, people have different opinions. Ultimately within his piece we find all the usual code words for someone who wants to favor religion: there are Darwinian “article[s] of faith”, “A shared conception of the soul, the sacred and transcendental values may be a prerequisite for any viable society”, the usual pious vagueness used to beg off that harsh light of skeptical inquiry. I think Schweder is merely politely throwing a prayer shawl over his head and begging leave to ignore the issue.
He may. I just have to say that I’m not fooled by his protestations that we just need to be nice to one another: he has taken sides, and he’s using a request to avoid scrutinizing his side to hide the fact that his side is feeble, weak, and doomed if inspected closely. I think we can all see where the “renewed and intense anxiety” actually lies, can’t we?
I don’t find the last point hard to understand; the defamation that atheists cannot be moral had been repeated for millenia before Locke’s time, and that defamation continues today. Schweder continues that tradition by repeating Locke’s words without disagreement or historical context.
Mr Schweder’s arguments and complaints won’t hold any water when he realizes that the resurgence of intellectual atheism is because of the godly’s use of God as an excuse to be militantly stupid.
I see a similar train of thought here, oddly enough, as I did in The God Delusion. Dawkins focuses his arguments on the nebulous, god-of-the-gaps deity beloved of university theologians. He repeatedly expresses the idea that “no one really believes the stories in the Bible are literal truth,” and that may be true in his largely secular world of university-educated, upper-class British society. Schweder’s lede, suggesting that anyone seriously bringing up God/Jesus/salvation at a dinner party would be looked at with bemusement at best, indicates that he moves in similar circles.
Both men are (probably blissfully) ignorant of the deep entrenchment of literalist, fundamentalist thought in much of the US–in flyover states, in small towns everywhere and in insular communities even in the largest and most nominally liberal cities. Sure, it’s something you can read about and shake your head over (“Oh, that crazy James Dobson is up to his old tricks again”), but when you’re surrounded by people who share your raised-eyebrow attitude to formal religion, it’s easy to forget just how “faith-based” much of American culture is.
I know this has little to do with the central (and annoying) argument of Schweder’s op-ed; but I just wanted to point out that “faith” has very different connotations to a Jew who attends temple for High Holy Days (or a Christmas-and-Easter Episcopalian) than it does to a red-state atheist surrounded by people praying over their meals at Denny’s. (If they were petitioning to be spared from the Demons of Salt and Cholesterol, perhaps I could understand it.)
Locke has a lot to offer in the realm of politics, or more accurately meta-politics. But for “the taking away of God”, give me Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius any old day.
RedMolly wrote:
And it’s the latter who are gonna have their cherished beliefs trod upon if their kids and grandkids get a decent science education. The former, well, they can adopt any one of several more or less contortionist positions which allow them consolation when the issues confront them. If you can live in the moment, that must be a wonderful approach to take.
Schweder actually states a pretty good reason why Dawkins, Harris, et. al. have written their books –they’re “reacting to the many recent incitements from religious zealots at home and abroad.” But he writes this only to immediately dismiss it as “fanatics and infidels…keeping each other in business.”
In other words, Schweder apparently thinks atheism is simply the flip side of religious fanaticism and therefore equivalent to it. I’m not impressed. Schweder is squeamish about atheism, but rather than debate it on its merits he invents this head-scratchin’ Enlightenment story.
PZ said, “Complaining that we are unhappy about seeing our myth of a total victory for reason in the 18th century falling apart is a classic straw man, since I don’t know anyone on my godless side of the fence who thinks we’re in anything other than an ongoing battle that has never been won….”
I don’t know of anyone who ever celebrated a total victory for reason, as even the 19th century version of Enlightenment values were heavily contaminated by religion. So too, for 20th century progressivism. I think Atheism per se is relatively new as a marketing phenomenon, though the Dawkins/Dennet mutual masturbation society need not be encouraged. The simplest explanation is that population trends and technology have opened a niche market when social scorn for atheism is getting lower and lower.
That said, David Brin has lamented the rise of romanticism in contemporary (well, reasonably contemporary) film and literature. One could see the reactionary politics of the Fundagelicals as a kind of Ur-Romanticism. Bygone era of innocence and all that.
But at the same time that atheism gets its 2nd (or really, Nth) wind, we are seeing lots of folk passing it over in favor of new age spiritual bullshit. The chopra gets deeper and deeper, and any coherent commentary by the Fundagelicals has to explain that trend at the same time as increase in atheism. Again, I think it’s just expansion of a market for the occult.
I agree with RedMolly. Schweder clearly has no idea what it’s like in “Red America,” where the hypothetical dinner party always starts with Grace, and any known atheists would be strenuously disinvited (and told to take the homosexuals with them). I am constantly astonished by generalizations about the “secularity” of life in America. It may be sinful and materialistic out here, but that doesn’t make it secular, or rational, or tolerant. It just makes it hypocritical.
I saw this op-ed last night and was hoping someone would post a critique, you in particular, PZ. I hadn’t encountered that quote from Locke in a while, so went to find the entire passage, just to see if it was or was not an instance of quote mining. Here’s the whole thing in case anyone hasn’t already checked:
“Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all; besides also, those that by their atheism undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretence of religion whereupon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, yet if they do not tend to establish domination over others, or civil impunity to the church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated.”
Gee, thanks John. I mean, don’t go out of your way or anthing.
RedMolly, well said!
Unfortunately, I work with some of those people, VERY trying, to say the least. Like talking to a stump.
The article is pretty much hogwash. The Enlightenment myth did indeed have predictive value up until recently (though one does not know if its predictivity has ended, or simply been drowned out in a moment of reaction), tending to reduce religious, tribal, and racial differences.
The 20th century the worst one? Did Scheder manage to miss the progress in science, and even in the efforts to prevent war and mayhem (due, sure enough, to the atrocities in WWII)? Yes, we can fight for reasons other than religion, but it certainly didn’t hurt for religion to recede as a (often proxy, but clearly aggravating) cause of war.
Perhaps the worst problem developing in the 20th century has been the growth of new tribal groups and intensification of class stratification. Whether it is “liberalism” or “conservatism”, the fact is that those in power maintain the networks and resources for themselves to remain on top. And as Orwell noted in Animal Farm, the crows (clery) come back to give their slight comfort to the people who are left out of the utopia (communist in his book, capitalist in our own time).
It used to be recognized that all would need a decent place in secular society for it to prevail. This seems to be so, in fact, as those left behind turn increasingly to religion.
The Enlightenment works only so long as it is used more for society at large than for the ivory tower, the bourgeoisie, and the upwardly mobile. It is as alive as it has ever been among the privileged, which is where it has had most of its (often snooty) true believers. The problem is that the natives are becoming restless, which might mean that the promises of the Enlightenment might have to be extended beyond the privileged.
A shared conception of the soul, the sacred and transcendental values may be a prerequisite for any viable society.
“Transcendental values” from a civic religion may be required to hold a society together–at least we have not seen a state exist without such political theologies. Why throw in the “sacred” and the “soul”, though? Neither has been explicitly sanctioned by American gov’t, rather the “transcendental values” alone have been contracted collectively by the people. In fact democracy had to come up with non-sacred values to hold together because there was no evident way to get religious sanction for liberal democracy.
Didn’t Schweder at least pause when he wrote that John Locke was a “very tolerant man”, considering the rot he wrote about not tolerating “untrustworthy” atheists? Sure, Locke wrote intelligent and worthwhile philosophy and poli-sci, but that doesn’t mean he was tolerant. In fact that is not the quality that springs immediately to mind when Locke is mentioned. Hobbes had a more pragmatic sense of what binds society together, and would not recognize any inherent problem with tolerating atheists.
And fine, I don’t mind his plea that mutual misunderstandings be looked at anew, indeed I’d recommend the same. Let’s not forget, though, that even a sentiment such as that one comes largely from the Enlightenment, not from Western religions. Nor ought we to forget that the always problematic spread of Enlightenment benefits will not be helped by increasing economic inequalities, nor by enlightenment elitism wherein the benefits of non-religion are enjoyed by the bourgeoisie like Schweder, while the masses remain narcotized by religion.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
I think Schweder is another one worried about the noise. Atheists and agnostics and freethinkers generally, fed up with the constant and unavoidable racket emitted by religious propagandists, insist, reasonably, on emitting their own. It adds to the general din, which Schweder finds distressing, but his appeal for restraint is based on style: not to be like *them.* He fails to acknowledge that counter-religious outbursts are a tiny fraction of the debate.
The real issue is that matching religious propaganda in volume of argument makes religion less prominent; matching it in trenchancy makes it look ridiculous. Schweder is getting at the second by objecting to the first.
What a pointless waste of editorial space.
I’m tired of the press talking about those having the argument rather than the argument itself. They’re willing to say what the atheist point of view is but not willing to engage it.
This revulsion to religion is mean… rather than natural or even logical.
It’s as if we should be nicer to the religious in a patronizing way. As if those who are religous are children and should be handled with “kid” gloves. Because religion is so pervasive we should try harder to tolerate the religious… when in fact most of their beliefs are repugnant in so many ways.
There seems to be an assumption that atheism is somehow a highbrow phenomenon while religion is populist. Asserting or implying this notion an old tack of Christian apologetics, but it ain’t necessarily so. Atheism, at least in its American form, is often pretty folksy itself and reflects commonsense skepticism or cynicism more often than complicated epistemological analyses.
I see this as another take on the “War on Christmas” propaganda crapola.
Run!
The Atheists are coming!
Hide your children!
Because the Enlightnement was only half-successful, let’s all just give up and accept the religious wingnuts.
Let’s accept the violence and the abuse they condone in the name of white, heterosexual America. Let’s accept the ignorance they foster in their children. Let’s accept the hatred they have for liberals and their intolerance of academia and higher education. Let’s accept the idiotic notions they have of an imminent Rapture.
Let’s just accept that human stupidity can’t be overcome and that people just have to have their religion.
No. Fucking. Way.
Read This:
The God Delusion? Part 5
the concluding part!
“That covers the basic and I think most convincing refutation of the anti-God argument. It doesn’t prove God by any means, much less does it degrade science. The damage that anti-God rhetoric does is to cloud reality. In reality there is ample room for both God and science. Many forward-looking thinkers realize this; sadly, Richard Dawkins isn’t among them.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-god-delusion-part-5_b_34974.html
Oh, this is just a big old plea for politeness, the tactic of not thinking about something because it makes people uncomfortable.
“Teach the controversy” as long as it’s about evolutionary theory–no controversies as to whether God or the soul objectively exist need be mentioned. (As if it weren’t important whether they exist or not! But it makes people uncomfortable to consider that they may not exist, so don’t talk about it!) This reminds me of the “we don’t ask questions like that” tactic in response to children’s inquiries (specifically mine) as to where babies come from.
“Let’s test science” but not faith. (Because we aren’t comfortable with the idea that faith may not stand up to the test.) Let’s be “critical thinkers” except when it comes to the critical question of what exists and what does not, and what happens to us when we die, if anything, or nothing.
Let’s just not think about it, the way that we don’t like to think about death. Let’s just put this uncomfortable stuff off–until death becomes a reality. Then we’ll subject everyone within earshot to our opinion.
This is mere anxiety and procrastination masquerading as a plea for “tolerance.” If Schweder doesn’t have the guts to ask whether Locke still holds his opinion (because he’s floating around in heaven, or not), he shouldn’t quote from the guy. Locke is dead and God did not say that.
And RedMolly’s point hardly needs proving but this is America and you know someone will:
Subdivision Bans Wreath With Peace Sign
Homeowner Defies Board, Faces About $1000 in Fines
DENVER (Nov. 27) – A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.
Those pesky atheists!
Delusions with a future are exempt from criticism. I get it now.
Hey, I’m in southwestern Colorado!
Well, western Colorado, anyway. I have no doubt such a wreath would be greeted with just this level of goodwill-towards-men in my town as it was in Pagosa Springs.
“Homeowners association president Bob Kearns ordered the five architectural control committee members to require the wreath’s removal. When they refused, concluding it was merely a seasonal symbol, Kearns fired them.”
Way to exercise that power, Bob. That’s showing ’em.
This “atheism is the flipside of fundamentalism” notion is a meme that is getting way too much airtime. It requires no brainpower to pass along, and on the surface, it’s compelling, as it uses the annoyance that moderates feel whenever religion is brought up in the public sphere- because atheists and fundamentalists are annoying, so of course they’re equivalent.
Of course, this ignores the very real political threat that actual fundamentalists pose to society, and is a great way to give, to use a popular notion, cover to the very dangerous fundamentalists and fundamentalist ideas floating around out there.
Thank you, AustinAtheist for the expanded quote. It seems Locke was using the “freedom of religion does not include freedom from religion” argument. I am glad that civilization seems to have advanced since Locke’s time, and it is unfortunate that Schweder is using such an old quote without apparent acknowledgment of the progress since.
To parody the Creationist|Evolutionist debate, I am not a Locke-ist. I do not feel bound by the thoughts of John Locke, who came at the very beginning of the Enlightenment. That Locke was not anachronistically tolerant of lack of belief does nothing to discredit modern notions of secularity.
Right. No religious component to WWII, any of those wars in the MidEast, or any acts of terrorism you care to name.
In other words, atheism is invalid because religion makes people friendlier. You betcha.
Kristine wrote:
I agree. Tolerance is frequently perceived to be about being polite and nice — not as a precondition for discussion, but as the substitute for it. Never tell people their religion is wrong. Mean or cruel or exclusionary or judgmental — but not wrong. Don’t just refrain in social situations, refrain from doing this in public — don’t tell the religious their religion is wrong in books or articles or essays either. It hurts feelings, and makes people think you must think you’re better than them, or why would you care? Why bother? It’s not as if it were a real issue itself, after all. It’s about people.
Have respect for others. If you’re an atheist, just give them that condescending, patronizing pat on the head Steve_C mentions and move on.
I think there’s also a strong appeal here to “moderation” as a reliable guide to truth. If there are extremes on both sides, then the people in the middle are getting it right. Fundamentalists have a God which is too powerful and judgmental: atheists don’t believe in any at all. They’re the extremists. Therefore, the reasonable, moderate, tolerant position is that God exists and loves us.
Dawkins’s Law of Adversarial Debate:
“When two incompatible beliefs are advocated with equal intensity, the truth does not lie half way between them.”
Is Schweder really a scholar? Because such intellectual laziness would be shocking in a graduate student, much less a professor at U of Chicago. This piece reads like a free association exercise on the state of intellectualism and theism, and cries out for, among other things, a good editor. My favorite passage:
“Science has not replaced religion; group loyalties have intensified, not eroded. The collapse of the cold war’s balance of power has not resulted in the end of collective faiths or a rush to democracy and individualism. In Iraq, the “West is best” default (and its discourse about universal human rights) has provided a foundation for chaos.”
The fact that the disaster in Iraq has somehow been laid at the Enlightenment’s feet is either stunningly stupid or brazenly deceitful, depending on whether Schweder is in on the joke or not. Even GW Bush’s supporters would not dare argue that his approach to foreign policy in Iraq has been a thoughtful, careful, or rational one. More generally, the idea of Bush as a modern flagbearer of Enlightenment thought and values falls somewhere between preposterous and pathetic. (Even if Bush says he read Camus this summer…)
I found myself most offended, though, by Schweder’s glib description of the Enlightenment’s “Genesis” myth, equating a well recorded and documented period of history with supernatural orgin tales and similiar flights-of-fancy. “Relativism” often seems to lend itself to this sort of reductio ad absurdum. In fact, perhaps relativists like Schweder are in fact threatened by the emergence of the bold rationalism espoused by Dawkins, Harris, et al., which refuses to simply toe the post-modernist party line and accept all world views as equally valid and worthy of endorsement.
I dunno if Schweder is “really a scholar” or not. But I’ll vote for the latter, based on what Keith Wolter pointed out, as well as his alleged research area.
The tagline in his waste-of-space column says that he is a “professor of comparative human development”. That is a new one for me. Comparative? Who/what is being compared? Humans and apes? H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis? If it’s humans and other humans, why not just call the research area “human development”? WTF?
Alarm, alarm! Is this the same Richard Schweder?
The most eye-opening essay in my opinion is Richard Schweder’s “What About Female Genital Mutilation?” which discusses this practice of certain communities in Africa. We, living in the West, have become familiar with FGM as one of the more barbaric practices that subjugate women, compromise their reproductive health and decrease their sexual enjoyment. Yet in this essay several women are quoted as saying that FGM is a joyful rite-of-passage that does not decrease sexual enjoyment or pose a health risk (in general), and that the “smoothing” of the female genitalia is considered attractive and “clean” by these women, just as shaving legs is in this country. A Harvard medical anthropologist and epidemiologist is quoted as concluding (after a survey of the medical literature) that the claims of the anti-FGM movement are highly exaggerated.
http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit06252001/womensociety.asp
You mean the openly religious civil war, complete with armies led by clerics and beheading of heretics and apostates? Yeah, that’s pure atheist rationality all the way. Nobody could possibly be more to blame for a violent religious schism than those damn atheists.
On the other hand, without the Enlightenment they wouldn’t have IEDs and truck bombs – or trucks for that matter. They’d be limited to stabbing each other and burning mosques instead of blowing them up. There’d also be a whole lot fewer of them available to murder, because many more would have died of starvation and disease before the war even broke out. I have a hard time seeing this as a benefit, though.
This is why homeowners associations are evil (mandatory ones, anyway) and no sensible person should buy a home entailed with one. Unlike the government, they have no bill of rights to protect minority viewpoints from being trampled on by assholes like Kearns; but since they *aren’t* the government, the courts will usually refuse to impose the real bill of rights on them. (Obviously a municipality couldn’t begin to get away with something like this, even in the most wingnut-packed court. Judges have to at least pretend to be following the laws.)
Here’s a comment about Schweder.
The most eye-opening essay in my opinion is Richard Schweder’s “What About Female Genital Mutilation?” which discusses this practice of certain communities in Africa….in this essay several women are quoted as saying that FGM is a joyful rite-of-passage that does not decrease sexual enjoyment or pose a health risk (in general), and that the “smoothing” of the female genitalia is considered attractive and “clean” by these women, just as shaving legs is in this country. A Harvard medical anthropologist and epidemiologist is quoted as concluding (after a survey of the medical literature) that the claims of the anti-FGM movement are highly exaggerated.
I cannot locate the referenced article, but it seems that our Mr. Schweder does not like to come down on any side. (Search for his name.)
Oh, quicksilver George beat me again.
Loren Micheal’s distinction between an annoyance and a very real political threat is one that I have been keen to make to other believers who feel ‘threatened’ by atheism.
It seems an abuse of the term ‘fundamentalist’ to associate it with atheism unless it can be shown that those described are the enemies of liberty. Unfortunately for those of us who are believers, it seems the majority of such folk are on our side of the aisle, rather than amongst the skeptics….SH
“Fundamentalism” means a return to the fundamentals or basics of a worldview or set of beliefs. Knowing this, I asked my father if he considered himself a fundamentalist and he said that he did. He was a very gentle person, not some crazed maniac. I suppose someone could call me a fundamentalist atheist and in this sense it would be correct. Schweder however is not helping the discussion, but deliberately obfuscating the real issues (assuming he knows what they are).
Oh, quicksilver George beat me again.
Don’t mess with this LCC-loving librarian.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/302108/stupid/
It’s Casey Luskin’s cousin on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire!!!
Quork,
You’re welcome!
“To parody the Creationist|Evolutionist debate, I am not a Locke-ist.”
That reminds me, does anyone else think it would be a good idea to create a quote mining project to catch editorialists like Schweder in the act of conspicuously quoting dead philosophers?
“he’s using a request to avoid scrutinizing his side to hide the fact that his side is feeble, weak, and doomed if inspected closely.”
They have:
More numbers…
More guns…
More money…
and more fingers on the nukes than anyone else.
So I think they are far from weak and far from doomed.
MYOB’
.
Kristine said, rightly: “Fundamentalism” means a return to the fundamentals or basics of a worldview or set of beliefs.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, a ‘fundamentalist’ is one who is mostly ‘mental’ (in a very British sense), and makes a habit of talking through one’s ‘fundament’. For them, the return to the ‘basics’ means a kind of recidivism to the baser human emotions, devoid of thought, understanding or sense.
Don’t mess with this LCC-loving librarian.
I humbly bow…thank you…I am not worthy…
It’s Casey Luskin’s cousin
Holy crap! Who Wants to Be A Stupidaire!!! (Do you think he just had to leave the stage quick to stop a surge of water flow? All that coffee…)
Isn’t this the same relativist nut job that defended Female Genital Mutiliation? His opinion isn’t worth jack.
Glen D. wrote:
“…The problem is that the natives are becoming restless, which might mean that the promises of the Enlightenment might have to be extended beyond the privileged.”
Now where have I heard that expressed before…
…Oh yeah, um…MARX, I think.
Radical-right religion has also been the often hidden stimulus of so much stupidly knee-jerk anticommunism, anti-socialism, any kind of anti-capitalism, really.
I’d say it was and is socialism’s unabashedly atheist worldview that still bothers so many Americans so much; I should know, it was actually a big stumbling block for me, too. Yes, I was pretty much an atheist from like, age 6 on, but I felt *guilty* about it, insecure. I actually went through a religious phase, very late compared to most people, my first time in grad school–thank goodness it didn’t last (as I’ve said before, I blame trying to get a handle on Postmodernism). When I returned to atheism, I did so confidently, no looking back, no regrets.
I remember resisting reading Marx until I finally had to for a Western Civ course my junior year of college. And to my great surprise, I found I had very little disagreement with what he wrote.
The Catholic Church certainly rigorously repressed their own insurgent Liberation Theologians in Latin America, promoting instead the most well-heeled reactionary cardinals to leadership positions. They also dumped money into the propoganda war against Salvador Allende prior to the Coup’d’etat that toppled him. I’ve read of US officials and businessmen coddling up to Latin American right-wing dictators describing them as “brothers in Christ”, etc. Just turns the stomach.
There is some nacent anti-capitalism in Christian thought, but it never gets anywhere, and its too radically ascetic and other-worldly to be of much practical use. But I will allow that the Medieval Catholic Church, with all its festivals & holy days, did at least give the working man in Europe a significant number of days off from work, which were whittled away by “the march of reason and progress”, until Unions organized & fought to win some of them back in secularized form.
The Enlightenment, as Habermas notes, is an unfinished project, and not without a dark side and aberrations of its own. But the way you fix those aberrations is by really sticking to rationality informed by a universal (and secular) humanist ethic, not by embracing some trendy PoMo irrationalism, or New Age Thought, or Old Time Religion.
Enlightenment for the few, just like Democracy for the Few, is just not going to cut it. In the height of 18th Century European Enlightenment in North America was still a society that held slaves in bondage and denied women the right to vote or own property, after all. It still has a long way to go, and indeed, there have been worrying setbacks of late.
But it’s still the best game in town.
Still worth including everyone in, not just the elite and the middle classes that administrate on their behalf.
Thanks for your post Glen D–a welcome contribution, well said.
I read that editorial in the NYTimes and couldn’t make head or tails of it. It was the sort of meandering piffle that any of my teachers in the Warburg would have immediately demolished with a very large axe.
Why, oh WHY do these people natter on and on about “Christianity” and Western Civilization, totally forgetting a) all the greek stuff we got b) all the Roman stuff we got (in particular, Roman Law, and c) all the developments of political theory that occured in the medieval and Renaissance?!
Gah.
Sounds to me like he longs for the good olde days, when we annoying atheists and agnostics used to keep our mouths shut, and stay out of sight, out of mind.
Kind of like those pesky gays, who just won’t shut up about themselves and their bothersome insistence on “dignity and equal treatment” these days.
Shweder invent “secular enclaves” and people them with rigid philosophes. That is not what I observe – I see practices such as secularity, democracy and science at work, spawns of enlightenment. They are discernible, fragile and feedback each other but will always need conscious effort to maintain.
More modernised practices such as skepticism, humanism and atheism have also their practical parts (consumer, political and religious skepticism, et cetera) which works in concert in all walks of life. Even Shweder assent this much: “the cosmopolites who live in secular enclaves”.
But cosmopolicy is indeed the reason I, and I suspect others, have started to contribute loudly to the general din. The advent of the web trivialized the process and increased the amount and quality of interaction – I can be a cosmopolitan from my media room, sipping my espresso and take it all in.
It just so happened that the process coincided with my finally, finally growing up (not coincident with my chronological age, I can tell you!) and leaving idealism for pragmatism. Which strengthened my atheism considerably – nothing better than substituting dogmatic beliefs for observations and reason.
I look forward for Shweder to weasel out by naming my media room my ‘secular enclave’.
Shweder invent “secular enclaves” and people them with rigid philosophes. That is not what I observe – I see practices such as secularity, democracy and science at work, spawns of enlightenment. They are discernible, fragile and feedback each other but will always need conscious effort to maintain.
More modernised practices such as skepticism, humanism and atheism have also their practical parts (consumer, political and religious skepticism, et cetera) which works in concert in all walks of life. Even Shweder assent this much: “the cosmopolites who live in secular enclaves”.
But cosmopolicy is indeed the reason I, and I suspect others, have started to contribute loudly to the general din. The advent of the web trivialized the process and increased the amount and quality of interaction – I can be a cosmopolitan from my media room, sipping my espresso and take it all in.
It just so happened that the process coincided with my finally, finally growing up (not coincident with my chronological age, I can tell you!) and leaving idealism for pragmatism. Which strengthened my atheism considerably – nothing better than substituting dogmatic beliefs for observations and reason.
I look forward for Shweder to weasel out by naming my media room my ‘secular enclave’.
In his 1689 “Letter Concerning Toleration,” he advocated a policy of live and let live for believers in many faiths, even heretics.
Quite disingenious. No, not “even heretics”… more like “ONLY heretics” since his live and let live policy for many faiths did not encompass orthodox Catholocism.
This article is just silly. The basis of his argument, that Enlightenment values have corrupted the world, is actually rather untenable when we consider the fact that the 20th century was very much anti-Enlightenment in regards to religion and authoritarian government.
I’ve pretty much pwned his whole argument here.
A deeper and far more unsettling answer, however, is that the popularity of the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society that it is not the story of religion but rather the story of the Enlightenment that may be more illusory than real.
Er…then what explains why those religion-attacking books are selling?
I mean, it’s not as if Dawkins or Dennett or Harris are famous just for being entertaining buffoons, as if they shouted “THE POPE IS AN ASS!” while stamping on Qu’rans. Their books sell quite well. They’re invited to discuss their ideas on serious news shows. They (particularly Dawkins) rank highly on popular lists of intellectuals. Heck, Colbert was nice to Dawkins.
The insecure paranoid atheist demographic–or the entire atheist demographic for that matter–can’t possibly be responsible for this; there aren’t enough of us. Apparently, a healthy chunk of Western society thinks outspoken atheists are cool, cool enough to spend money on. Why would we stop “waging intellectual battles over the existence of god(s)” at a time when people are particularly interested in hearing about it?
AustinAtheist: I’ll contribute some research time, if needed. But you’d better include live philosophers, too, since I’ve seen people mangling them, too.
Keith: I’ll keep my eyes open.