I’m really exhausted with this debate business, but there’s one more post I want to highlight. Brother Blackford, who’s been in the U.S., just got home and has a post on the implications of DebateGate. The most interesting part, I think, is one of Russell’s bugaboos: the widespread notion that religion (as opposed to say, politics) is supposed to be given a pass in public debate, while atheism, of course, is not:
The comments directed at Haught were far more genteel than what we typically see from Christian debaters such as William Lane Craig. I’ve seen Craig far more openly mocking than that in the way he deals with his opponents. However, you might say that Haught did not use any mockery or even any direct criticism of Jerry’s views as expressed elsewhere (such as in articles and posts at Why Evolution Is True). That’s correct. Haught chose to concentrate on sketching his general worldview, putting it in historical perspective, and so on. Still, I’ve seen him, in his books, engage in forms of condescension, mockery, and outright abuse that go far beyond anything we can see Jerry Coyne doing in the video. Haught is not Mr Nice Guy, even if he played that role on the day. He can be as nasty as any nasty “New Atheist”. Indeed, his open letter, with its continual use of emotive, angry language, is nastier (and far more obviously unfair) than anything in the speech that it denounces.
This incident reminds me of the earlier fracas over Jerry’s New Republic review of a couple of books by, respectively, Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson. Though the review contained some strong criticisms of the books, it was well within the proper bounds of civility for a book review.
And yet, it led to claims (notably from Chris Mooney and apparently Barbara Forrest) that such books should not be reviewed in such a manner – that doing so is uncivil. Once again, the proposal seems to be that religion, or at least “nice” non-fundamentalist religion, should be treated with a special deference that would not be given to, say, economic theories or political ideologies. Anything less than a solicitous attitude to religion counts as incivility. . .
The point is that people like Jerry Coyne are likely to encounter over-the-top reactions even when they engage in thoughtful, and appropriately civil, critiques of theological or religious views. Perhaps some of the reaction to that, in turn, then becomes hurtful or unseemly (Haught claims to have received very abusive emails over the current fracas, for example), and I don’t condone that. But let’s be blunt: Haught needs to get out more if he thinks there was anything remotely inappropriate about the way Jerry conducted himself at the University of Kentucky. It is Haught’s outraged and outrageous open letter that merits our condemnation.
I then went back and looked at what Chris Mooney said (and agreed with) when summarizing Barbara Forrest’s criticism of the New Republic piece. Here’s how we’re supposed to behave when talking to religious moderates (Mooney’s admonitions are indented, separated by my reactions):
1. Etiquette. Or as Forrest put it, “be nice.” Religion is a very private matter, and given that liberal religionists support church-state separation, we really have no business questioning their personal way of making meaning of the world. After all, they are not trying to force it on anybody else.
That’s ridiculous. “They’re not trying to force it on anybody else”? Really? What are Catholics doing all over the world, with their opposition to abortion, birth control and condom use, divorce, and so on? For many years they basically set the law in Ireland, for instance, and still affect it in many other nations. Every time someone takes a religiously-based stand in politics, they’re trying to force their religious views on other people. Trying to force your views on others is what politics is about, of course, but we have every right to criticize politics when they’re motiviated by unevidenced superstititon. Is religion a private matter when it motivates people to blow innocent people up in the name of Allah?
If religion really were a private matter, I doubt that many of us would spend so much time going after it.
2. Diversity. There are so many religions out there, and so much variation even within particular sects or faiths. So why would we want to criticize liberal Christians, who have not sacrificed scientific accuracy, who are pro-evolution, when there are so many fundamentalists out there attacking science and trying to translate their beliefs into public policy?
Why can’t we go after all of those who enable pernicious superstition? That includes nearly all Catholics who deliberately keep silent about the foul crimes and policies of their church, as well as those wingnut fundamentalists. The Pope causes far more harm in this world than do people like William Dembski or Ken Ham. As I’ve said before, the antiscience views of religion are only one part—and not the worst part—of how religion poisons everything.
3. Humility. Science can’t prove a negative: Saying there is no God is saying more than we can ever really know empirically, or based on data and evidence. So why drive a wedge between religious and non-religious defenders of evolution when it is not even possible to definitively prove the former wrong about metaphysics?
Of course science can prove a negative. It can prove that I don’t have four wisdom teeth, or that Barack Obama wasn’t born in Kenya. Presumably neither Mooney nor Forrest believe in Santa Claus. And note where the wedge is driven: “between religious and non-religious defenders of evolution.” Well that wedge also separates some of those who enable harmful superstitions from those who don’t.
While civility and diplomacy have their uses, there should be more tools in the chest than just those. The right tool for the right job, as the saying goes.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. But what if not every problem is a nail?
Though maybe a hammer is exactly right for this job.
First, Haught was actually rude, specially at the end of Q&A. As far as I remember, you only went after his arguments but he, at the end of Q&A, went after you. And it does not matter if it was because of his frustration or what not.
And second, the statement “Every time someone takes a religiously-based stand in politics, they’re trying to force their views on other people” is so fundamentally true that I hope someone puts it on a billboard or something. And by the way, the same argument applies to Pascal’s wager or “What if you’re wrong” types of nonsensical defense of religion too: “What if we are wrong? Well, then at least we won’t carry the crime of opposing our world view on others based on a silly wager and no evidence.”
Since when did table manners suffice for the lack of a chef? Haught is compensating for a corporeal sustenance deficit.
oohhh; I like that!
+1
Very good piece by Russell. You’ve got to admire the man.
As for “liberal religion”, here in France same-sex marriage is still illegal, probably because our president is allowed to enter a cathedral on horseback (true prerogative granted by the Pope)…
Ah, so you’re saying that the French have a cavalier attitude to religion… ?
/@
+1
Oh, that’s good.
Brilliant!
If I were the president of France I would make sure to do that at least once in my term of office!
I would do it once a week and hope the horse does its business inside the church. After all, a little more horseshit wouldn’t be noticed.
That’s why most atheists say “there’s no evidence for god(s), therefore the probability of god(s) existing is vanishingly small.” Mooney’s been told this many times. He continues to ignore it and pretends all atheists (except himself and other faitheists) dogmatically declare the utter absence of God™.
I declare the utter absence of God/Thor/Ra/Shiva, et. al. Just as I declare the utter absence of unicorns, fairies, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a whole of other imaginary beings.
Because they are just that — imaginary constructs. And I do not have the need to pretend the possible existence of imaginary constructs in some sort of phoney ‘open-mindedness.’
And I am at his point, by the way, because I was open-minded to the facts. And the facts are, simply put, there are no facts to support any reason to believe in any supernatural fairy story. Period.
Actually the theistic god is indistinguishable form the deistic god. Which is to say that the only god left unrefuted is the deistic god. Which is to say that “god” is a funny name for “a quantum fluctuation”.
I don’t recall where I read this.
When one says that the whole world is God, one hasn’t provided anything profound about the nature of God as much as yet another superfluous synonym for “world.”
Mooney continues to demonstrate that he simply doesn’t get it.
The goal isn’t at all to win people to our flag and convince them to join us in pledging eternal loyalty to Darwin. Indeed, such is the very antithesis of our goal.
Rather, or goal is simply to use reason and evidence to convince people of the utility of reason and evidence and the folly of superstition and wishful thinking. Everything else will sort itself out from there. (Or, at least, we deserve what we get if it doesn’t.)
The denialism directed towards modern biology (and cosmology and geology and…) is but a symptom. The disease is religion. Chris, you’re welcome to target the symptoms, but kindly refrain from getting in the way of curing the disease, mkay?
Cheers,
b&
Oh, I like this:
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Presuming that everything else will sort itself out from there seems like the folly of wishful thinking.
However, some of the zealous atheists are looking ahead to what happens after that bridge gets crossed, so a bit of individual-level folly isn’t any existential grade of hazard.
Yes, that’s what bothers me about things like The Clergy Letter Project. They’re just trying to get people to mouth the words “I believe in Evolution” and they use arguments from authority to do it. “Plenty of religious scientists believe in evolution” or “my pastor said I’m ALLOWED to believe in evolution so I do.” Yuck.
Exactly. Things like The Clergy Letter Project completely miss the point of what science supporters are trying to do- replace arguments from authority with evidence and reason. I want to live in a society where individuals try to evaluate claims based on their merits, not blindly swallow whatever their leaders tell them to. A person who accepts evolution just because their pastor said it’s okay now is intellectually no different from one who thinks it’s an evil blasphemy of Satan because their pastor said so, and just as likely to get suckered.
The question we want people to consider is, why would you use a lesser standard of evidence in choosing a world view than in choosing a used car?
🙂
Very well said.
Hear, hear.
No; I’d go father than simply pointing out that religion can’t help but stick its nose into politics. I’d emphasize that the negative feelings towards atheists are the direct result of the view that there is something noble, disciplined, admirable, and sensitive about choosing to be a person of faith. The so-called “liberal” believers are only willing to grant that the atheists are not irrational by assuming that the atheists are shallow. Nonbelievers have the intellectual arguments … but believers have heart.
Screw that.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t insist that God is the most important, significant, meaningful thing in life itself — the universal focus of all purpose, love, and appreciation — the ultimate foundation of existence and transcendent transformation — and then tell people that this belief is just your own personal private little quirk, a matter of taste, really. It’s like preferring cake to pie.
Bullshit. God either matters or it doesn’t.
And if you’re going to build your life — your very identity — on the importance of God, and the relevance of faith, and the ultimate division between the spiritual and the profane, the enlightened and the unenlightened, the higher and the lower, the saved and the damned — those who “get” God and those unfortunates who do not — then you do NOT have the moral right to hold this viewpoint aside from criticism, analysis, and just critique from the despised minority on the outside.
We are not stupid. We do not buy into the idea that your attitude towards atheists are not affected at all by your attitude towards atheism. What you say to our faces (“We’ll respect you if you don’t try to change our minds”) is not, and cannot be, what you say to each other and to yourselves (“How could anyone not believe in God? How sad. How empty.”)
The liberal believers who keep their mitts off of science actually piss me off at a deeper level than the yahoos who think science proves God. At least the latter agree that if God exists it ought to show some demonstrable consequences in the world. It ought to make sense. They’re standing on common rational ground there with nonbelievers and engaging with us. In this area at least they say that atheists are wrong because atheists are ignorant of the facts. It’s an empirical matter. Ok. We can deal with that. We can deal with that very well, in fact.
What we can’t deal with is the smug, self-righteous, condescending, oh-so-enlightened view that whether you believe in God or not comes down not to how you evaluate evidence but to how deeply you feel things. Are you open to being ambushed by love? Can you think higher thoughts about higher realms? Can you vibrate in harmony with the Ultimate Purpose of Love in the cosmos? Can you make that leap of faith and embrace the full extent of your humanity and connection to the divine? Can you rise and embrace the Most Important Thing that Is???
No? Oh. I see. Well, this personal transformation cannot be forced — so I can’t convince you and won’t even try. Let us change the subject then.
No. Let’s fucking not.
Huzza!
And Haught certainly had the “personal transformation” right at the forefront of his presentation. The meaning, of course, being that unless “you” have undergone this “personal transformation” you aren’t going to be able to understand any of the “deeper” truths about what I am saying.
This is the arrogance of religion that probably angers me more than any other precept.
Sastra. Brilliantly said.
Bradw – That’s how I felt too. Haught is a condescending bastard
A child in long trousers.
Anyone else ever listened to a liberal religious person spout one of these lines and felt like they were saying that they’d still respect you in the morning?
HaHa!
“You can’t have it both ways. You can’t insist that God is the most important, significant, meaningful thing in life itself — the universal focus of all purpose, love, and appreciation…”
Great comment…when you think of the word love and appreciation and then think of the idea that this imagined ‘god’ has the capacity to fry you in hell for all of eternity if you make the wrong decision has two implications 1. he is evil 2. he works closely with the devil – they are partners in crime. Which leads me to the conclusion that my heart is greater than this imagined god and that really pisses religious people off in a very fun way.
Another fun trick (yes, I know this may seem juvenile), but when anyone tells me they will pray for me I always tell them not to because god has spent such an incredible amount of time making sure that I have this absolutely gorgeous life filled with such trivial problems that I had to actually tell him to stop it already and spend a little more time on those kids eating mud pies in Haiti. The look on their faces is priceless.
I love you, Sastra.
Point, set and match to Sastra.
You are, of course, completely correct, Sastra. But bear in mind that the vast majority of ostensibly “religious” people, aren’t. They are not believers, that is; they merely believe in belief — at least insofar as can be determined from how they practice their religion as opposed to how they proclaim it. They certainly do not act as though the eternal fate of their precious immortal soul hangs upon the verity and intensity of their religious beliefs and practices.
It is easy to lose sight of this while frequenting sites like this, since it tends to expose one to a skewed demographic. The people you come into contact with — both pro and con religion — hardly constitute a representative cross-section of the population as a whole; they have self-selected according to their interest in the topic.
When the vast majority of those who self-identify as religious think about non-believers — to the extent they think about us at all — it is with a vague feeling of ill-will, lumping us in with blasphemers, pornographers, and other morally dissolute degenerates. It is similar to the feeling reportedly expressed by a 1950s French hausfrau toward Sartre and his confreres. While cursing up a bleue streak in a spasm of anger, she stopped and admonished herself: “Mon Dieu, I must be turning into an Existentialist!”
I’m in a book club and we’re reading Black Elk Speaks. Man, if you think that Christianity gets a hands-off, they’re gonna hate how I’m going to respond to this book. Here’s one member’s quote about the book”:
One of the things I particularly liked was a comment by Black Elk that this world and all we know are but a mere shadow or reflection of a larger Spirit World.
“How do you know this?” will only be the first of many combative questions I have for the group. As a history, this is an interesting book, but the Native American woo gets really, really thick.
Yes, the special protection afforded the ideas in religion goes nuclear when the religious ideas are held by a supposedly marginalized group. Suddenly, criticizing the claims are lumped in with being ‘racist.’ You’re just as bad as the missionaries who forced their ideas on indigenous populations and killed those who wouldn’t convert — and even many who did.
I think the belief that in religion attempted persuasion is just a form of de facto compulsion is derived from the tribalistic view that religion defines identity. If faith is a matter of heart rather than reason then the only realistic way to get other people on your “side” is through strong-arm tactics and suppression of the other person’s “true nature.” The person who analyzes the issues critically and tries to change the other person’s mind is really just trying to take away what makes that other person unique and special.
We’ve got to fight that idea. We can’t let bullshit and demonstrably bad religious beliefs get mixed up with Native American “pride.” They deserve better than that. Good luck.
I’d love to hear how your club discussion goes.
Ah, fond memories of the Carlos Casteneda days…
OTOH, some native faith claims have resulted in liberalized statutes regarding such tribes and peyote, pot, etc.
“Nor is to deny any claims that some atheists, some of the time, engage in actual incivility – some doubtless do, and indeed I have been known, myself to say things in anger that I’ve later regretted.”
It can be hard to overcome the suspicion that if you whack the terminally stupid upside the head hard enough their brains might actually start to work – and harder still to overcome the feeling it’s worth trying at least once.
A similar step is part of the basic repair algorithm employed by most backyard mechanics. The bitch of it being that it works just often enough to merit at least one try under most circumstances. Which makes it hard to argue with your logic here since, if it can work even on really smart machines like computers and TVs, why not give it a shot on an inanity-spouting fool? I mean, how much worse could it possibly get?
If you’re clicking over to Blackford’s place to read his thoughts on Haught/Coyne, do be sure to read the comment from Jean Kazez, who presents the interesting argument that Haught got his undies in a bunch because Jerry laughed through the presentation.
She does have more to say on the subject, but if you’re at all familiar with her arguments for accommodationism, I doubt you’ll find novelty in her remarks.
And here I thought Jerry’s smiling confidence and enthusiasm was engaging and disarming.
Interesting argument? Au contraire:
Even if it didn’t cross Jean Kazez’s mind that the smiling might be due to nervousness—jumping to the one conclusion that did (without even considering possible external evidence to back it up) is, to put it extremely mildly, not a nice thing to do.
Put to one side even the flagrant flouting of the principle of charity. What this reaction shows is nothing more than that you (in Haught’s position) are concerned that what you said might look ridiculous and that other people are ‘out to get you’. Not even considering, let alone inquiring after, the possibilities that the former might be true and the latter paranoid—i.e. that whatever you think might be wrong—is a serious oversight in and of itself. And, btw, another example of a violation of the Must Not Fool Yourself rule.
Yes, exactly.
My first thought on reading Kazez’ comment was that she immediately ascribed Jerry’s occasional chuckles to ridicule, not nervousness. Struck me as really unfair. And uncivil.
My first thought was “Kazez.”
Not one for generosity, I kept my second thought for a rainy day.
Exactly! Absence of evidence IS evidence of absence!
Knowing requires proof or one can ‘know’ any absurdity one can think of, which is obviously pointless; like living in a madhouse of randomly hallucinating madmen that take their insanity for reality.
As Victor Stenger has pointed out, absence of evidence is evidence of absence if the evidence should be there but, when searched for, isn’t. Absence of evidence for the efficacy of intercessory prayer is a good example.
It’s like Bigfoot- we can’t conclusively say 100% that it doesn’t exist, but with decades of searching and human activity in all the areas Bigfoot is supposed to have exist, there still hasn’t been any form of evidence ever presented that couldn’t have been rather easily faked, so saying that “well, it COULD be real” is just silly.
Oops, “all the areas Bigfoot is supposed to exist.”
Right! That “absence of evidence” stuff? Go tell it to the dog that didn’t bark.
And it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure that out. Hell, it doesn’t take Larry Holmes — or even John Holmes.
(IIRC that last line, or something like it, comes from Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine)
I think Richard Blackford nailed it. John Haught seems to think he can expect Jerry to not criticize his view at a symposium and if Jerry does he can complain about the intellectual quality of Jerry’s arguments, Jerry’s supposed ad hominems, and Jerry’s supposed misrepresented John’s quotes. But, oh, John has no problem writing books like “God and the New Atheism” which is just a few hundred pages ugly rant about “New” Atheism and “scientism”. (I couldn’t get past the first 30 pages. That Jerry did is “saintly”.) John has no problems in his books and in the Q&A at the symposium badly misrepresenting what Jerry, Richard Dawkins, and others actually think. Jerry is an explanatory monist? Get real, Jerry and most other atheists have no problem with the notion that there are multiple explanations for why water is boiling etc. They just don’t think John’s theological nonsense are valid explanations. Haught’s behavior asinine and uncalled for.
Can Haught really take the “New” Atheism seriously? I don’t think he can. He doesn’t understand what atheists think and misrepresents their views. He thinks we need “personal transformation” to criticize and I don’t think he would accept that an atheist has such a transformation. It seems that John holds by prior assumption that atheism is intellectually weak, too weak to take seriously. Why’d he do the symposium?
The liberal religious absolutely do impose their religion on the rest of us. They do so by making religion a virtue. In doing so, they have created enormous social pressure to believe in God and have made atheism into a vice. They are strong arming many decent people to believe. And they are creating the bigotry against atheists and environment for fundamentalism to thrive. Also, if these moderates support church-state separation so much, why do so many of them still want “under God” in the Pledge? The religious moderates are as bad as the fundamentalists.
So what you’re saying is, Haught doesn’t understand sophisticated atheism? 😉
+1
given that liberal religionists support church-state separation
This is a huge lie that so-called liberal religion has spread. Religionists, whether extremist, liberal or anywhere else along the spectrum, stand shoulder to shoulder in protecting religious privileges in US law. They all take advantage of the many exemptions and privileges granted them by US laws, and together they spend millions of dollars every year lobbying to insert their religious views into laws. Of course, when the Lobbying Disclosure Act was passed in 1995, they lobbied their way to an exemption from disclosure for churches and “religious orders”, so it’s difficult to pin down who spends what.
The largest religious organization that voluntarily discloses its lobbying is the Society of Friends, or the Quaker church, which, by most definitions would qualify as a liberal religion. Last year they spent about two million dollars lobbying Congress on Afghanistan, health care, cap and trade, and other issues. By inserting themselves into politics, even if one supports their stance on the issues, they are supporting the right of religions to lobby for things like withholding medical care from children (Christian Scientists), anti-abortion in the health care bill (Catholics), and so on. And, when you think about it, if the Quakers, of all people, have two million dollars to spread around Washington, just imagine how much some churches who have real money will spend. The idea that any religious organization supports church-state separation is disproven by the facts.
I don’t know if a church lobbying the government is a breach of separation of church and state. People have a right to gather together, to petition for the redress of grievances, or words to that effect, even if they do so because they have superstitious beliefs.
I think the evil comes from the church claiming, and the state accepting, that the church’s positions are somehow privieged, and more worthy of acceptance, because they are religious.
If religion is supposed to be such a private matter, why is Mooney not telling the religious to stop writing books about their religious beliefs ?
I asked him that in 2009. Repeatedly. (So repeatedly that I got banned from commenting.) He never answered.
That doesn’t add a lot of credibility to his position. I’m thinking of selling my small amount of stock in it before it goes much lower …
There’s a discussion on Youtube with Haught, Dennett and another person whose name I can’t remember. Towards the end, Dennett was talking about the suggestion that the books written by the “four horsemen” were harsh and rude. He said, “If you think about it, there’s just no polite way to say, ‘Excuse me sir or madam, but have you considered the possibility that you’ve wasted your life on a delusion?’ ” Haught laughed.
So I guess it’s not WHAT you say to Haught, it’s whether you say it while looking like jolly ol’ Saint Nick.
I think this is it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upX0i66T40I
BTW, the real howler in that Mooney post is not even quote in the original post. It is the following:
Note how according to him the reason one can not base public policy on religion is that people can not agree about religion; not a word about religion being simply false and a bunch of nonsense. Because as usual, not offending people in the slightest way is more important than getting things right.
I feel sympathy for John Haught. He has invested his entire career in a pointless and empty endeavour. His sense self-worth and status in society depend, no doubt, to a large degree on the legitimacy of theology.
So any fundamental criticism of theology ends up being a crushing personal attack against Haught and people like him. And there is no way for him to save face either.
Until not so long ago, bright kids, who weren’t necessarily devout at all, chose to go to seminary and become theologians and priests. This was encouraged by catholic and high church societies as a respectable and worthwhile career path for the talented.
Accommodationists also stand to lose more than the Fundamentalist preacher and to lose more rapidly. The onslaught of general secularism and the efforts of New Atheism are eroding the Fundamentalist’s congregation by a couple percent per year. He can go on with his life, possibly without even knowing what’s going on.
The accommodationist authors, journalists and theologians on the other hand, whose target audience are literate, well-read, intellectually orientated individuals could be out and forgotten in a snap. Just ask Marxist scholars from Eastern Europe, but also from the West.
****
That said, I don’t think that Jerry could have been more accommodating. He comes across as a very likeable and good-natured guy.
That last bit is why I think Jean Kazez’s claim that Jerry laughed (mockingly) from beginning to end is wrong. My sense was that it was a way of countering the possible effect of his content. Remember at the end where he said “Sorry to be pugnacious, but I’m a scientist and I don’t like to see my discipline [contaminated? I forgot the word] by religion”? It was like that: a signal of non-pugnacity; at times self-deprecating. There were a few brief laughs at absurdities, yes, but only a few. (I would estimate maybe 3.)
Jeez, it’s like Talmud studies. I have more minute knowledge of this than is healthy. I should get out more.
I looked at some other videos of Jerry, and I think the style of delivery across presentations was consistent. I certainly did not feel that he laughed through the presentation. His delivery was perhaps not as formal as Haught’s but I see a similar difference in the styles of Lawrence Krauss and Sam Harris.
“Now, go and study.”
Jerry smiles a lot, and chortles in a friendly way. He’s also a handsome fellow.
It never occurred to me that he might have a pleasant demeanor because he’s so mean. Subtle indeed!
Yes. I think this is the core of the issue. I have once talking to a senior church officer, and the main issue with him is that he can’t entertain any other idea than catholicism, because (he never mentioned this explicitly) he had invested his whole life on that, career, social standing and all.
It is not a matter of whether heaven (or even jesus) exist, it is (for people like Haught) a matter of personal existence.
People will die fighting for much less.
The sad thing is that bright younger people nowadays are still go to the same career as Haught. While it might be a career move for the dull ones, it is sad for those who are really intelligent.
I have two different nephews that goes to seminaries (the decision made the family very proud). These two young men are different in intelligence. One of them will find a lifelong career to live happily as a respected member of society. The other faces possibility of an unsatisfactory life full of self-doubt.
You know already which is which, the more intelligent one will be the sad one. I hope he will be “enlightened” by atheism one day, though I am sure it will be very hard to be an ex-dominican atheist. With that constant praying and meditations.
Sad!
Precisely my take. I’d also attribute his pleasant demeanor to the confidence of having the facts behind you and a general appetite for going head-to-head in intellectual debate. I thought that was what these point/counterpoint exercises were supposed to be all about.
call me crazy, but all this attention about the manner of the talk has seriously diverted attention from the substance of the talk. clever tactic by haught, perhaps? all of this has been nauseating to say the least. you’re a bigger man than i, mr. coyne. i’ve lost many civil arguments in my day and it’s never fun, but such is life, as it can’t always be fun. it seems as if haught is really insecure about all of this and the “show” that has gone on since the conclusion of this talk is in poor form. it’s hard to respect the man in light of all of this. at any rate, keep swingin’!
Precisely. That was one of my biggest objections at the time (early June 2009). Was and is.
A possibly even more glaring flaw in the claim is that Mooney made it as part of his argument that Jerry should not do things like write that New Republic review. But as I pointed out about 50 times back then, the review was of published books. Published books are the very opposite of “a very private matter.” Published books are public (see what I did there?). Public claims are public claims, they are not “a very private matter.” We get to dispute them in public and there is nothing reprehensible about doing so.
It sems to med Mooney need a lesson in manners. (And I don’t even have to yell “get off my lawn!” =))
Short Mooney: Your strategy is wrong. Lick my boots.
The only reason given: fear “the religious right”.
Sheez, that is what I get for typing with my cleaning gloves between shores. “It seems to me”.
The public/private issue raised by Russel Blackford seems to be the critical point in how atheists should engage with the religious.
If someone expands the purchase of metaphor and allegory to the point where, for him or her, the church can be seen merely as the source of a poetic book and a venue to play badminton, this is not anyone else’s business. One might go further, and agree with William James – the source is a superbly written essay about skepticism and faith that Prof Haught admires – that “we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will”. James ends this essay by saying that “no one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, or bandy words of abuse”.
It does seem unnecessarily uncivil, and is absurd on the face, to treat all those who choose the religious hypothesis as stupid. How they should be treated seems more a question of context; and James’ suggestion is fine in principle, but only for so long as all concerned respect both of its parts.
The context-setting issue here is the massive asymmetry that exists when it comes to vetoes. The atheist veto that James considers unjustified is philosophic, concerning what constitutes “permissible” belief. But, as Russell Blackford says, the vetoes arising from the Abrahamic religions are never just about this. These vetoes are encapsulated in “god wants ….” sentences. They are not metaphors, they are not merely philosophical, and they are not rooted in tolerance. They are predicated on the belief that it is possible to hold, beyond reasonable doubt, that a being exists who has issued knowable prescriptions about the conduct of life; and, often, that these these prescriptions should be imposed on others, even if the underlying hypothesis is not live for them.
At this point, the Jamesian bargain has broken down, and the affected others are, surely, entitled to resist. They are entitled to point out what is at work. They are entitled to ridicule the presumption to speak for them. They are entitled point to the lack of evidence of the kind that they understand to be evidence. They are entitled to say that subjective experience of the power of a metaphor, or of cosmic purpose, is not evidence; or that statements about the logic of the heart are not evidence; or that human capacity for faith in the existence of an absent god is not evidence; or that the argument from an unpalatable consequence is not evidence; or that a priori metaphysical arguments, even if conceded for the sake of debate, don’t get anyone to a god who “wants”.
Advocate for a god who wants nothing, and belong to an institution that advocates for this too, and there is nothing further to say. But as soon as you participate in a discourse leading to a “god wants ….” sentence, you are helping to sustain its embedded veto on the behavior of others, and are thereby acting politically. Religious people, of course, have as much right to political expression as anyone else, but not to the claim that their political views are validated by some special privilege, just because they are religious.
Moreover, even though you yourself may not use “god wants …” sentences, if you support the institutions that do utter them, then, as Russell Blackford says, you enable them. The actions of enablers are in some ways are more pernicious than those of open affirmers, and there seems no reason to distinguish between them, when deciding how to interact.
In this context, what was offensive about Jerry’s list at the end of his presentation was that it accurately described the actions of a church, not that it was made.
That’s ridiculous. ”They’re not trying to force it on anybody else”? Really? What are Catholics doing all over the world, with their opposition to abortion, birth control and condom use, divorce, and so on?
Just as odious, if not more so IMO, is the coercion and intimidation and indoctrination that is part and parcel of the dogma of heaven and hell itself. That children are subject to that – and for God’s sake no less – has to qualify as one of the more egregious examples of child abuse. There are obviously spectrums associated with both sexual and mental abuse, but, as described in Dawkins’ The God Delusion, one woman who had been subjected to both thought the latter was far more terrifying:
Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as ‘yucky’ while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest – but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares. [pg 357]
Way to go, Pope. And Mr. Haught. And all of his ilk.
It’s not true to say that religious “moderates” generally *do not* reject scientific accuracy. How about, and this is just one example, the existence of the soul? Perhaps science has not *disproved* it, but there’s certainly no scientific basis for believing it, and there’s evidence which suggests that if it did it exist it would be entirely superfluous. It’s also important to note that this example has direct bearing on social policy re., for instance, women’s control over their reproductive capacity.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not prepared to go easy on these people to spare their delicate feelings. If somebody points out accurately that I’m wrong in a manner that makes sense, then I change my mind. I don’t start crying like a baby who’s had his security blanket taken away. Please forgive me if I expect such adult behavior from everybody else over the age of maturity. I really don’t think that’s unreasonable.