When I see an article by Alan Jacobs, I always pause. He's another one of those voices out there that 'gets it' more than many do, both in the larger cultural arena as well as in the church.'His recent article in the Wall Street Journal called, "Too Much Faith in Faith," is an uncommon challenge at the major voices of the "New Atheism" movement. Jacobs says that calling "religion" the problem, when it is often used as a thin veneer over deeper, darker motivations, is an anti-intellectual approach of many intelligentsia on these matters. Here's sampling paragraph:
Most of today's leading critics of religion are remarkably trusting in these matters. Card-carrying members of the intelligentsia like Mr. Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris would surely be doubtful, even incredulous, if a politician who had illegally seized power claimed that his motives for doing so were purely patriotic; or if a CEO of a drug company explained a sudden drop in prices by professing her undying compassion for those unable to afford her company's products. Discerning a difference between people's professed aims and their real aims is just what intellectuals do.
I would add that it should be strangely suspicious to the thinking-class that the New Atheism is fueled by other motivations besides reason, virtue, and doing Westerners a favor. They are doing less to enlighten the public as they are to propagate a certain point of view with evangelistic fervor. Philosopher and atheist, Thomas Nagel, pinpointed the motivation when he wrote, "I do not WANT God to exist!" (The Last Word, 1997, emphasis mine).Alan Jacobs article points beyond the religious veneer into darker places of the human heart. His new book on Original Sin is on my summer reading list!
13 comments:
Samuel Skinner
Politicians often claim patriotic motivations- and often they believe them. It is known as rationaization.
The reason we don't believe the CEO is her job is to serve the shareholders- if they are good with lower profits... well, that never happens. So there is an alterior motive.
You need better examples.
I take it you sympathize with the New Atheism.
I think those are adequate examples to illustrate contrary motivations under the surface of goodwill. Whether it is rationalized or not, isn't the point really. Self deception is still deception.
In short, you can't measure a thing by its abuses. You cannot say money is evil because some use it to hurt others. You cannot say marriage is evil because some people abuses their spouses. You cannot say we should get rid of all humans because some went sour and became dictators. It irrational when people say, for example, that the Christian religion encourages all sorts of evil when Jesus never did such a thing. In other words, people may do things in the name of Jesus, but that's the problem of abuse, not the problem of Jesus.
I think a anyone taking the time to see the principle can see the point in these illustrations.
If you want something closer to home, ...our lending crisis today can be said to be a result of giving loans to people ill qualified people who could not generally afford a home... only to line the pockets of lending brokers everywhere. And look how many people are suffering today! How many are losing their homes! Should we say money is the problem? Or is loaning money is the problem? Or does the problem stem from abuses in the name of other things?
Religion is very often used to cloak terrible motivations. A short reflection on history reveals that. I think Jacobs is onto something that the New Atheists isn't taking things for what they are. I've read and listened to enough of the New Atheism to see so many straw-men lined up, they outnumber the scarecrows in Kansas.
If the New Atheism wants rationalism to triumph, they need to use rationalism to make their case, enough so that reason, not merely emotions or refusing to see the point, can persuade.
Thanks for your comment!
"I've read and listened to enough of the New Atheism to see so many straw-men lined up, they outnumber the scarecrows in Kansas."
great line.
Pathology can have no better friend than rationality...
Adam (what happened to 'journey'?),
Boy isn't that the truth. Rationalism chokes out all sorts of things, including being informed by our emotions (where love breeds) and our imagination (where meaning breeds)....
Glad you liked the scarecrow metaphor. I was reluctant to use it for fear of being cheesy, which it probably still is! But hey, so are straw-man arguments, cheesy like nachos. :D
~dale
1) "journey" is metaphorical, but not ...me.
2) It's somewhat cheesy, but passable.
perhaps:
The New Atheism relies on so many straw men that scarecrows are filing for copyright infringement!
or
The New Atheism relies on so many straw men that scarecrows are thinking of going union!
or
After a number of leaders had spoken at a conference of New Atheists, the proceedings were shut when it was determined they were in violation of the fire code when it was discovered they had too many highly flammable arguments in one location!
;)
Ahhh, my clever friend. These were so good, I shouted them across the room to Jonalyn... the third one had me cracking up, not only because it was witty, but joined with that rounded pleasure of truth.
Samuel Skinner
And there are a large number of instances where a perso's beliefs were obviously responsible for their actions. The Holocaust for example. It makes no sense unless you understand that Hitler believed the Jews were evil and out to conquer the world. The man really believed that! Even today some people do.
Money is a tool and marriage is an institution. The are simply things used to achieve ends- we can't ascribe them good or evil.
You do realize that Jesus did say some bad stuff? And it isn't abuse if you are following the rules- like being against gays. Yes, yes- old testament. Unless Jesus declared it null and void, it still stands... not to mention NO ONE follows the new testament. I mean, you still have pocessions!
In addition your principles make it impossible to criticize any ideology- they are all just "abuses". I think we can all agree communism is inherently flawed- and so is Christianity, for very similar reasons.
The problems stems from giving money to people who can't pay back. You are acting like an idiot by asking if it can be blamed on money.
Than give examples of why they are wrong, not just metaphors. The fact is that all religions have abuses- a fact that is inherent in religion. If you don't have religion, you don't get such abuses- religion isn't essential!
Also, you assume people's motivations are terrible... uh... why? Aren't you familiar with "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Do you doubt that many religious atrocities were caused by the purist of motives?
And you declare they need to "make there case"- they do- read "Daylight atheism if you doubt it.
Rationalism is the rejection of things that are irrational. Emotions and immagination aren't irrational- they can be quite rational sometimes, irrational other times and also arrational.
Please explain how it is a strawman- you simply assert it is.
My dear Samuel...you're interrupting the fun with a whole, what, nine paragraphs. I was unaware that confusion could be stacked in such a way!
You and yours may notify anyone within typing distance when you have something that resembles an argument.
Until that time, I don't think you are begging to compare the body count between religion and non-religion? I'm holding two world wars in my hand...if you're going to call, then you'd better have something magnificent...
your play
Samuel,
Thanks for the reply.
And there are a large number of instances where a perso's beliefs were obviously responsible for their actions. The Holocaust for example. It makes no sense unless you understand that Hitler believed the Jews were evil and out to conquer the world. The man really believed that! Even today some people do.
No doubt people act on their beliefs. The problem comes when people act on false beliefs (they think are true or self-benefiting) but dress it up as virtuous to do so. That's the problem of hypocrisy that Jacobs is getting at. And you can’t judge the real thing based on how many hypocrites it has. Reminds me of the old quotation, “Hypocricy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” Most sane people wants to be thought of as virtuous, yet anyone can play hypocrite: religious people, atheists, bankers, ice skaters, gardeners, jailbirds, superheroes, and scientists.
Hitler did believe that Jews were evil and the gateway of the devil. But Hitler also used lots of propaganda to wage his war and massacre millions. He knew how to sway a crowd and dress up his work in silky words.
Leaders today often do the same thing, as we’ve seen with recent media coverage that Bush skirted some issues in order to wage war in Iraq. But we were told there were WMDs in Iraq, even though now we see that our intelligence was dubious. Yet, that’s what we were told. And so we believed him based on false information and a partially false motive.
Money is a tool and marriage is an institution. The are simply things used to achieve ends- we can't ascribe them good or evil.
Many would say religion is an institution too. In fact, many use that as an excuse NOT to follow any religion at all.
And I’m unsure if tools and institutions can remain as neutral as all that. We can ascribe good or evil to them, if they are intrinsically good or evil. Institutions and tools can be appropriate and inappropriate depending on what they stand for and used for. Marriage is a deeply appropriate response in community and love and time. I thin it is intrinsically good (yet can be abused and people can pretend to be good marriage partners and, in reality, be terrible marriage partners).
As for the intrinsic value of tools, I think torturing devices are tools that are intrinsically evil because of the purpose of their design.
So I think my analogy works.
You do realize that Jesus did say some bad stuff? And it isn't abuse if you are following the rules- like being against gays. Yes, yes- old testament. Unless Jesus declared it null and void, it still stands... not to mention NO ONE follows the new testament. I mean, you still have pocessions!
Not sure what you mean by 'pocessions' are... help me out...
But I'm curious what bad stuff Jesus said. I've heard Sam Harris quote parables of Jesus way out of context (a straw man example) saying Jesus encouraged his followers to kill those who opposed him. And the gay example can't be used for Jesus cause you just said he didn't say anything about it. And that’s actually an argument some say PERMITS homosexual behavior. So it can’t be had both ways.
What is more, homosexuality has not only certain religions discouraging it, but the larger case of natural law. And nature is not a religious institution and is accessible to us all.
Besides, there are gay Christian movements (my cousin is part of one). There are nuances and various ways to talk about and think about homosexuality. It’s a complex idea and issue and needs to be treated as less black and white.
In addition your principles make it impossible to criticize any ideology- they are all just "abuses". I think we can all agree communism is inherently flawed- and so is Christianity, for very similar reasons.
Actually, it doesn't. On my principles, we criticize and analyze based on what a thing really is, not based on how people have abused it or played hypocrite with it. If any religion (or anything at all, really) is to be criticized, it should be done based on what it actually says and is, not based on how people have taken it out of context. We call this identity theft.
The problems stems from giving money to people who can't pay back. You are acting like an idiot by asking if it can be blamed on money.
That's my point. You can't blame it on the money. You blame the abuse. I think you agree with my analogy that we cannot blame a thing by its abuses. What troubles me in an era of unreason is that so many New Atheists are, to borrow the analogy, blaming the money because it can be abused.
Than give examples of why they are wrong, not just metaphors. The fact is that all religions have abuses- a fact that is inherent in religion. If you don't have religion, you don't get such abuses- religion isn't essential!
That's a lofty one to sustain. If you don’t have religion, you don’t have abuses? I think, perhaps, you’re missing my point here. Plenty of abuses happen without religion. I quoted marriage and money being abused above. You don’t have to be a religious person nor an atheist to beat your spouse or embezzled the boss’s assets.
What if someone said that atheism is bad because those who followed it spilled more blood in the 20th century than all the religious wars combined? That’s a relatively true statistic. But should I judge atheism by it? An atheist would say those were abuses of atheism and not the real thing. Yet others may say there’s a real case to be made (survival of the fittest and all that) that an atheist, unlike a religious person, may be justified in murdering millions. Yet, I personally wouldn’t go that route because I want to take atheism in its more noble forms and find it wanting among kind-hearted folks.
In addition, if a religion says to 'feed the poor' how is that an inherent problem with religion? Is atheism against feeding the poor? If a religion says to be humble, is atheism against humility? Are these inherent problems in religion?
I'm of the persuasion that a religion can only be true if it can be verified through correspondence and not merely through coherence (to use the two most popular theories of truth, which reasonable people hold to). So, for example, I believe in the resurrection of Jesus apart from religion, though my religion also says that it happened. In other words, if I have evidence that speaks toward an event or a fact, how can we say religion is inherently the problem? Perhaps evidence and truth are the inherent problem, not religion? You need to give me more reasons why religion is inherently the problem. I have a masters in the philosophy of religion and have found lots of inherent problems, but religion, per se, wasn't one of them.
Also, you assume people's motivations are terrible... uh... why? Aren't you familiar with "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Do you doubt that many religious atrocities were caused by the purist of motives?
I don't think all people's motives are terrible all the time. Forgive me if I even implied it. Many people can do bad things with good motives. Bad things with good motives is only one step behind good things with bad motives. Both are problematic. But that's not the point. The point is that if someone judges anything by its abuses, then that's misjudging it. The problem is deeper than that. And a reasonable person will look beyond the surface.
I’ve heard many the New Atheists float along the surface by saying religion is flawed because of the Crusades or Inquisition or Salem witch trials or whatever. Yet, these were, in many ways, abuses of religion, not the real thing. On the flip side, do atheists want to be judged by the machinery of Mao? As with most of these cases for both religion and atheism, the motivations were largely political, not religious or atheist party-lines. And if political, we see the problem lies below the surface about the problem of the human heart, no matter what worldview they follow.
And you declare they need to "make there case"- they do- read "Daylight atheism if you doubt it.
Thanks for the recommend. I checked it out. Just reading the “Atheist’s Creed,” leaves more questions than answers. Here’s one: Human consciousness alone renders humans valuable without further justification. Wow, that’s a conversation stopper. Some atheists call this speciesism and even blame religious people for thinking humans as intrinsically more valuable. It does need further justification than just announcing that we are valuable because we have consciousness. And what about other valuable things without consciousness, like animals? Or even the earth? Should we preserve the earth simply because it secures our future? Or should we preserve it because it is good? Modernity, where atheism found its most secure foothold, has done more to demolish the valuable things in this world with its belching smoke-stacks and its robotic educational systems and its consumer economies than anything else the world has seen. And we celebrate it because we say it brings ‘ease’ to life or we hold up ‘technology’ as a trophy (as if technology has intrinsic value). We are in a Brave New World (Aldous Huxley). And we grip it as if it were brave or new or a world worth having.
Here’s another from the Atheist Creed: morality is based on what brings the most happiness and the least pain. On this view, morality isn’t morality, but pleasing or abhorrent sensations. This view of morality is just about all an atheist has because there is no intrinsic goods in this world. (Morality, traditionally, is based on what is good, not what brings happiness). Perhaps an atheist is fine with that. But it does smack against human experience and the legacy of Western thought. All that exists for the atheist are intrinsically bouncing atoms, a la Epicurus. If you we limit ourselves to science alone, then we lose lots of other meaningful things in this world, like the humanities. The problem of atheism is that it remains unopened to a larger set of possibilities, possibilities that present themselves meaningfully but get explained away into reductionism, sensations, and creating your own meaning (which is another part of the ‘atheists creed’ on daylight atheism).
While I think the daybreak atheism pens a good prose and is sincerely trying, is this view really supposed to be attractive with reason and experience? Western Civilization was not born out of such a grim view of the world (nor was science).
Rationalism is the rejection of things that are irrational. Emotions and immagination aren't irrational- they can be quite rational sometimes, irrational other times and also arrational.
I am referring to "Rationalism" as a historical movement, not as an approach. We should all weed out irrationality (which also means not judging things by their abuses). But rationalism, historically speaking, chokes the soul. Or as Adam says above, it is closely akin to pathology. We often call it ‘robotic.’ Rationalism has fueled the dehumanizing of modernity in that it exalted reason usually at the exclusion of other human faculties (which is one major reason why postmodernity was born).
And when I’m referring to emotion and imagination, I’m not just referring to that thing that makes you cry or that thing that lets us draw pretty pictures. I’m referring to those faculties that identify and trace meaning in this world, something rationality has a hard time doing. Perhaps those categories would be better referred to as “emotional intelligence” (Daniel Goldman) and “metaphorical intelligence” (Kathleen Norris).
Please explain how it is a strawman- you simply assert it is.
I gave some above.
Thanks for the comments and dialog, Samuel!
First AT-
First World War- Nationalism
Second World War- Facism, Whatever Japan was and Communism
Dale... wow...
First of peoplw genrerally don't hold false beliefs- they THINK their beliefs are true.
And your point is? I'm not saying that people do wrong for religion when they are hypocritical- they can do so equally well when they are entirely selfless and a true believer.
Hitler is a good example. He brutally clawed his way to the top, bumped of his enemies, used his position to get nookie... and he also believed that he was the defender of the Jewish people against the Jewish-Communist threat. It wasn't hypocricy- he actually believed that.
Bush wasn't being a hypocrite- he was lying. His "motivation" may or may not have been pure.
Tools and Institutions intrinisc value depends on what they were designed for (should have been more accurate in the first place). Marriage is simply a ceremony that gives certain benefits to a relationship, money is a medium of exchange, etc.
Religion is dedicated to spreading itslef and so its value depends on its content. Torture tools are obvious.
The Old Testament says to kill gays. And Jesus didn't say that you could ignore it- you can get more detail from other Christians.
Natural Law is only supportable by religions assumptions.
Yes, it is more than black and white- it has no color. Treating people differently because they are gay is wrong- but Christianity does that.
As for possessions... you now, items, goods, bling- stuff. Jesus tells his followers to give it all away.
Identity theft? So we can only criticize what it says... and if we criticize Christianity it is "out of contect"? How... convienient.
What abuse? There was no abuse in the lending crisis- people simply made bad decisions or where uninformed and paid for it.
If you don't have religion you don't have abuses based on religion.
Stalin was a real atheist. I don't deny he was as much an atheist as I am. He was also a man- as much a man as I am. And he had a mustasche- as much a mustache as I do. Actually his was bigger.
The fact is atheism doesn't have a dogma, a belief system- anything. It can't be abused anymore than not believing in cupid can be abused!
Humility is bad- it requires someone to be humble to. If it is God, than the presists get to stand in. As for feeding the poor, it ties civic duties and morality to religion- driving a wedge between believers and those of different faiths.
How is it misjudging a cause if people did bad deads explicatly due to its teachings? Marxism never calls for gulags- are you going to tell me those things were just "abuses", that "true" communism is free of such inperfections?
The witch trials were bad becasue they are justified by explicatly religious motives- after all, you have to stop the witches because they are servants of Satan!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/09/tracymcveigh.theobserver
You don't like that standard because... you don't like it? Given that is the thing that seperates us from animals, that is thing that makes us valuable. How valuable is up for debate.
The things you blame on modernity are due to industrialization. Especially the school system.
No- A Brave New World is static. Our world has life.
You truely do not understand, do you? You assume that coming to grips with the fact that humans are biological machines is terrible- guess what? The truth exists, no matter how terrible it is. You think it defies reductionalism- look at the economy: a giant machine made entriely of its parts that produces unbelievable things, bizarre things, wonderful things... terrible things. A complicated enough system and you get interesting results. Complain about reductionism all you want- it doesn't make it any less true.
Rationalism is the realization we can enjoy the garden without believing there are fairies at the bottom of the well.
Remember- just because you don't like the fact that materialism, reductionism, empiracalism, monism and the rest are true doesn't make them false- it makes them surprising. The universe does not mold itself to our expectations and desires.
"The fact is atheism doesn't have a dogma, a belief system- anything. It can't be abused anymore than not believing in cupid can be abused!"
1) If you are not aware of a certain set of assumptions that support this, and certain logical consequences that follow, please go study philosophy. Look up "Metaphysical Naturalism".
YOU have an ideology. Denying that is like denying your own existence.
2) Still waiting for an argument...
3) Empiricism: all knowledge comes through the senses. But the claim "all knowledge comes through the senses" is not a truth discoverable by the senses. Therefore, Empiricism is self-referentially incoherent.
p.s. #3 IS an argument. try one--you might like it!
A.T.
Two other items...
1) You are begging the question in favor of Metaphysical Naturalism and...
2) You are appealing to consequences as a reason to dismiss religion.
Both are informal fallacies. And Metaphysical Naturalism, which is intrinsically atheistic, was at the foundation of the demagogues of the World Wars.
My Royal Flush beats your pair... shall we play again?
A.T.
Samuel,
I do think you would benefit from a basic course in philosophy and the history of inquiry. I'm not saying that to be mean, but to offer some counsel. Your comments are loaded with assumptions and sometimes miss my point completely.
Epistemology 101 would tell you that people do hold false beliefs. Of course nobody holds a belief because they think it false. They hold it because they think it's true. But it's still a false belief.
A true belief is one that corresponds to the real world. A false belief is one that does not. This is basic, uncontroversial epistemology that both atheistic philosophers and theistic philosophers agree about.
One example: many scientists, once upon a time, believed plants grew because of the heat of the sun. This was a false belief. It could not be a true belief that was false. That's a contradiction. Later they discovered it was light, not heat, that provided the nutrients. So their false belief became a true belief because the content of the belief changed.
I am pleased that you say my putting ideas in context makes them difficult to refute. Yet, you say this is a bad thing and do not show me how I am wrong. You simply assume I'm wrong for putting things into context. You accuse me of making a claim unfalsifiable, while at the same time making your claim unfalsifiable (because you have a distaste for context when it makes your argument look strawmanish). But you can't have it both ways.
In context, Jesus did not say to sell all your possessions. In context, he was referring to someone who valued his wealth more than he valued more important things. Wealth was an obstacle to love. If Jesus was against wealth, then the father of the Jews (Abraham) wouldn't have been wealthy, that Solomon wouldn't have been rich enough to impress the other kings of the world, and that Lydia wouldn't have been a welcome part of the church. We must put things in context before we criticize them.
This is another example of a straw man.
On the gay issue, again, we need historical context of what it meant to be gay in the ancient culture. Those laws given to a nation of Israel when God was their king (later they rejected God as their king and wanted a mean man.
And the word 'gay' means a lot of different things today. And it also depends on how one acts out homosexually, just like it depends on how one acts in adultery.
Natural law can make a case that homosexuality is unhealthy by simply showing medical statistics or looking to ways body parts should be used. Many homosexuals die of diseases these days because of it. Are we to say that nature is evil because it lets people who go against nature to handle the consequences of it?
I'm not saying this to be harsh and there are homosexuals who are trying to live according to nature. This is a complex issue and the the historical contexts have changed from those we find in the Old Testament. Those are all things we have to put into context and wrestle with.
On A Brave New World, I'm sorry you missed the point of the story.
As for the 'wonder' of humans being biological, I agree that they are. I just don't see how they are MERELY biological. Even the atheists in philosophy of mind struggle with this because there are things about humans that cannot be explained solely with biology. That's not controversial either, except maybe to Richard Dawkins. But he's a zoologist, not a philosopher, so he's always speaking outside his expertise in these things. But he has good rhetoric and can make fun of people really well.
As for natural law being fueled by religion, actually, no, religion isn't necessary for it. Natural law tells you that if you jump off a cliff you will splat at the bottom. Nothing religious about that piece of information. That you 'ought' not jump hearkens to the idea that you are 'supposed' to exist in this world at this time. And most people can see 'supposed to' if they think on it a bit. The curious thing is how 'supposed to' showed up in an atomistic world. This has been an atheistic quandry since the beginning and a rather simple observation. That the New Atheism wants to cut off any branch that doesn't fit on it's straight and branchless tree should be very suspicious to the average person.
By the way, I don't hold to a belief in fairies in the well, either. And I don't believe in cupid. Nor Santa Clause. And those are more examples of straw men given these days that completely miss the point of a First Cause. It doesn't take religion to look for or ask the question or explore a First Cause. It just so happens that the best explanation I have found is that the First Cause is personal. I arrive at that without religion. And it so happens that the religion I hold to agrees with hit. And like I said before, just because a religion says something, per se, doesn't make it wrong. Atheists still believe in humanitarian rights and feeding the homeless.
So, you don't have to be religious to believe in God. So even attributing God's existence to religion is a fallacy.
Back onto the original post, Jacobs was pointing out that when people play hypocrite, we cannot criticize what they 'claim' to believe. We can only criticize their hypocrisy. That's something, again, the New Atheism propaganda has a hard time doing (because it doesn't stick).
Humility is bad? Along with philosophy, I recommend reading some classic literature. ;)
And as for reductionism, that view came around several hundred years before Jesus did. And it wasn't based on science. It was just as dogmatic then as it is now. It's a philosophical dogma, not a scientific one. And, once again, this is not controversial.
I agree with you that the universe does not mold to our desires (unless we're talking about technology whose purpose is to shape the universe to our desires, a la Francis Bacon). And, because of that, we can see beyond the closed box of the reductionist and discover that, indeed, the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts!
Who would have guessed that?
This is the metaphorical and emotional intelligence that I referred to in a previous comment that is either missed or unexplainable on the reductionist model. Even evoking the word 'wonder' is an attitude of 'humility' which you said previously is a bad thing to have.
Better to dominate the earth and let wonder be smashed to smithereens. It gets in the reductionists way of conquering the universe because it makes the universe look sacred....
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