A reader asks Andrew Sullivan, “What have you learned from the writings of the New Atheists?” The answer, apparently, is not much. As always, Sullivan responds as a cartoon figure, world-weary and pretentious, and here proffers a dismissive three-minute answer:
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On Hitchens: He didn’t teach Sullivan much. Apparently God is Not Great “didn’t address God” and “didn’t address the questions that bring [Sullivan] to God.” WTF? The first claim is a lie, the second irrelevant.
On Harris: Sullivan says that Sam is “so honest, so lucid, so clear that he misses something.” WTF? He does like The End of Faith, though, but calls Sam an “unwitting theist.”
On Dawkins: Sullivan doesn’t like the “contempt and disrepect” toward religion that he sees coming from Dawkins and other New Atheists. (Do recall that Sullivan is the man who, when I said that many people took the story of Adam and Eve literally, asked, “Has Coyne read the fucking thing?” (Sullivan’s view is that that story “screams parable,” and was never meant to be taken as literal truth). I’d aver that that characterization of me shades a bit toward contempt.
In general, Sullivan sees some value in the New Atheists having addressed the “crisis in Christianity” that Sullivan sees in today’s America. What’s an example of the crisis? The “prosperity gospel”, which I guess means the gimme-dollar “theology” of television and radio hucksters like Creflo Dollar.
But the New Atheists really didn’t have much to say about that sort of “crisis.” Their real contribution was, of course, precisely the request for evidence for belief, the refusal to afford respect to those faiths (read all faiths) that didn’t provide any, and the singling out of the damages of religion.
Sullivan didn’t learn much from New Atheists not because they didn’t address God, but because he’s a closed-minded git.
h/t: Bob
Haris destroyed Sullivan in this debate “http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secular-Philosophies/Is-Religion-Built-Upon-Lies.aspx”
You can lead a cat to the milk bowl but you can’t make it drink !!!
That was a great debate, and yes, Harris completely obliterated Sullivan’s disorganized, heedless and impetuous balderdash.
Bad ananlogy, since milk is bad for most cats.
You can lead theists to a syllogism but you can’t make them think?
Boy do theist debaters love them some syllogisms.
Naturally their premises are always wrong, but they adore the fact that if A, and then B, that you MUST accept C. The compulsive nature of the syllogism is appealing to the simple-minded follower.
it’s all rhetoric and emotional “hooks”, great way to avoid talking about facts…it works.
Why the hell would it address god? Might as well address the four winds. Oh, wait. They’re real.
Denial much?
I liked the web exchange between Harris and Sullivan a few years back.
Sullivan gets pwned (did I use that verb correctly?).
Yes, yes you did.
I watched Sullivan on this season’s final episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” last night and I’d say the phrase “world weary and pretentious” captures his performance perfectly.
What little respect I had for Sullivan as an intellectual or hope that I had that he would eventually understand the inanity of his positions is very rapidy evaporating.
“Close-minded git?” Well, I’m not exactly positive what a “git” is but based on the context I’m pretty sure your description is an understatement.
Andrew’s lost. He’s flailing around in his own self-made, self-maintained mental feces.
Poor man.
~Rev. El
My first thought also; give up on AS. And if he was just an individual, I might be tempted. But he is very public and influential, and we can’t just let it go, whatever our inclination.
He is flat out wrong, yet so close to the truth. Although if Hitchens and Harris can’t persuade him, it’s going to be a tough one.
Yes, he is very public. But “influential?” Who is he influential with, other intellectually challenged people like himself?
Seriously, who are you referring to?
I have to agree with “other intellectually challenged people like himself”. I should have stated that he is well-known, and this often gives the illusion of legitimacy to the type of persons you mentioned.
Take Hitchens’s general advice on this one: engage Sullivan as if he’s intellectually redeemable. From what I’ve read of Sullivan’s, I’m not hopeful that he’ll ever find his way out; nevertheless, responding to his tortured nonsense isn’t time wasted.
Besides, maybe we can goad him into responding to the debate with Haught—watching that would be fun!
A ‘git’ is a contemptible fool
It derives from the word ‘get’ as in ‘misbeget’ i.e. an unwanted bastard
Andrew S is not a wholly unintelligent person, and he has done good in writing on behalf of gay people and against torture; the trouble is that what intelligence he has is outweighed by a huge and pervasive sentimentality, a weakness for being in with the powerful (common to a lot of journalists), a liking for an oracular and oratorical banality (read him on political speeches – George W. Bush’s, for example), a belief that if he is sincere, or has the feeling that he is sincere, in what he says, then what he says must be both interesting and right when very often it is neither, as well as a very unpleasant and shrill bullyimg streak that comes out when he feels threatened, as by atheists, and that came out in the dishonest and dishonourable process that led up to the Iraq war.
This is a decent exposition detailing how personal qualities which we all “feel” should make one immune to delusional thinking and acting can actually just fuel it.
So high IQ, access to power and resources, liberal preferences and even an open gender identity just combine to create a more shrill insistence on his delusions and personal attacks and abusive ad hominems.
Thus, we propose that personal, delusional thinking and acting is far more powerful than pretty much any and all personality characteristics. Makes sense from a psychological “please protect my illusions” POV.
Sullivan: The unfounded braggadocio of Catholicity.
Off topic but couldn’t find dr. Coynes address. fabulous project Illuminated Origen of Species needs help! http://www.illuminatedorigin.com/The_Illuminated_Origin_of_Species/Home.html
Check it out!!!
I’m way ahead of you. I’ll have a full post on this tomorrow morning.
Shudda known!
Of course, now theists will be using this book as evidence that evolution is too a religion.
doh!!! ORIGIN of Species.
It is quite all right, no one here believes OrigenOrigen was illuminated or interested in evolution.
FWIW, I usually don’t stutter. :-/
What Sullivan (and others) have really learned from the gnu atheists is, as Daniel Dennet put it, “There is no obligation to try to believe in God.”
Most theists who sneer at the gnus think that it’s self-evidently the other way and we just don’t “get” it. If you’re smart enough and determined enough you can use metaphors and analogies and vague and obscure handwaving to rescue the concept of “God” from both falsehood and irrelevance. Don’t we see that we can do that? Don’t we understand that doing this makes us better, deeper, wiser, and more sophisticated people?
No. We don’t.
I wonder what would happen if Sullivan tried to see what happens when he stops trying to believe in God — and stops thinking of this effort as a virtue.
I would alter that just a little. We do see that we can do it. In many ways we see that a lot more clearly than they do – we see that anyone can do it and that they do it all the time and that it’s a dodge, which of course is the clause they would much prefer us to omit.
We do see that we can do it, and as you indicate, we flatly disagree that doing it would make us better, deeper, wiser, and more sophisticated people. We are convinced by much argument and observation that on the contrary it would make us worse, more deceptive, more evasive, less honest people. We also consider the idea that the handwaving maneuver is “sophisticated” to be just one more dodge.
This (and Sastra’s starting comment)! When discussing my de-coversion with a friend this weekend, I noted that the turning point was when I realized I was trying to make myself believe. From there, it’s a short hop to, “If this is true and obvious, why do I have to work so hard to believe it?”
Sullivan is never going to stop trying to believe in God, and, as the conversation with Sam Harris showed, he is never going to take any argument seriously or responsibly where his belief is at stake.
….best to avoid the rhetorical tactics and discussion of meta issues, like personalities, of the anti-science folks and keep bringing the discussion back to facts….
I laughed at his disdain of the practices of various American sects of Christianity, but he apparently does not see the foibles, inconsistencies, lies, dogma and disdain practiced by his own disgusting sect of religion with its own “flaws, idiocies and failures”.
The one that is on record as having condemned people like him to hell for merely preferring individuals with the same genitalia.
Or that its mafia is on record for systematically shielding and abetting pedophilia from the very top down, and may become on record for human trafficking:
“Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals. [*]
The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.
Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.”
Also here and here.
———–
* I don’t think there is any such investigation as of yet, “merely” some 900 (IIRC) families seeking legal action based on at least 2 confirmed cases. But if pedophilia was systematized the likelihood that this was too is raising.
He is right about that, but not about the way he expressed. Actually, I would say that it screams fable or “Just So” story.
But if it screams fable, what does that say about the millions who take it to be literal history?
And a note to Andrew Sullivan: Instead of typing your words into that ridiculous cartoon-o-matic machine, just post the words directly.
um… WHY does this guy post himself as a cartoon figure? Is there a reason??
For the same reason JC occasionally misspellz sum words, he thincs its kool 😉
“he thincs its kool”. Ah, and here I thought it was because he is sometimes touched by the divine hand… erm…. paw of the Ceiling Cat and then is inspired to speak in LOLcat tongue.
🙂
I quite like it, I think it’s appropriate too. He makes about as much sense as Daffy Duck.
Sullivan, like most theists, wants to frame all the arguments against the existence of God as really being nothing more than arguments against bad theology, bad religions, bad organizations, and bad people. Hey, they’re against bad theology, bad religions, bad organizations, and bad people too — so the new atheists, like the old atheists, haven’t really addressed their faith at all, haven’t touched on God. We’re on the same side otherwise.
They thus extend a favor to us (“see how alike we are?” and expect us to return the favor (“yes, yes, and therefore we’ll leave YOUR wise version of God alone.”) Greta Christina says that they’re seeking the “Atheist Seal of Approval,” an admission that our nonbelief is directed at the BAD religions — and even from our objective, critical stance their spirituality is pure and true and good. The implication is that oh, if only all religious people were like you, then we atheists would lose our hostility towards religion, turn inward, and find God.
They’re trying to quiet their own critical voice by dulling ours.
Observation: The theists you describe usually distinguish bad religion from good religion based on political preferences.
what i have not learned by being a gnu atheist, by reading dawkins, hitch, dennett, or harris, is why “we” bother interacting with boobs like AS. to steal a Utah Phillips and (mis)quote, the religious are like refrigerators; open the door and the light goes on, the light goes off, they’re not going to do anything that isn’t already programmed into them.
do “we” really expect anything to change, can “we” learn anything from them that they haven’t regurgitated a thousand times before?
We engage them in the hope that others will be able to correctly evaluate their arguments and thus extricate themselves from the web of lies.
@Jerry: Why did you put theology in quotation marks? Get-rich theology is not any more or less valid than any of the other theologies. As you frequently point out, theologians have produced no methodology to discern correct from incorrect theology.
Because it is a practice rather than a theology?
If the Adam and Eve story is a parable, then what is Jesus? Why did God give his only begotten son for humanity? Sullivan is a git!
“so honest, so lucid, so clear that he misses something.”
So clarity and honesty are now impediments to enlightenment. Who knew?
That was a telling comment. I was also intrigued by the allegation that Harris is an “unwitting theist”. I don’t think this is at all true, but as someone who has frequently characterized the likes of Karen Armstrong as athiests, I’m sensitive to how someone on Sullivan’s side of the debate would interpret Harris’ position.
Of course they are, this is a big difference between gnus and believers, we think clarity and honesty are good things, they think they get in the way. Well they do get in the way of nonsense of course, so they are forced to rely on equivocation and poetry to make their points.
Be entirely delighted to address God. What’s the address?
North Pole? Or was that Santa? I get them mixed up.
Close. God resides in frozen waterfalls.
That he would use the synonyms “clear” and “lucid” right next to each other in a sentence is a sign of how he thinks about these things: the more adjectives the better. For Sullivan religion is a poetic, emotional mishmash, a sort of pretty fog that has to be shielded from the sunlight of reason. Atheists miss out on the pretty fog, poor things, without which life must be just awful.
Unless this faith-fog is comprised of atomised single-malt scotch, I’m quite happy being able to see when I’m standing in manure.
Well of course he hasn’t learned anything (he seemingly hasn’t even “read the fucking thing” in all three cases). He learned absolutely nothing from his pasting at the hands of Sam Harris a few years ago; no reason to expect he’s learned anything since.
Like any confused & frightened theist in the throes of Vatican (read: Stockholm) Syndrome, anything that comes close to revealing the hidden hands of the Punch & Judy show that is Sullivan’s faith is blocked out, denied, erased, thrown down the Memory Hole or even projected back onto whoever is doing the revealing – anything to save it lodging in his own brain and making him actually think about it. Textbook Vatican brain-aikido.
Sullivan must’ve heard some humdingers about Hell when he was a kid; he’s clearly too petrified to be honest & reasonable regarding faith. It’s sad – he’s otherwise pretty bright.
My amateur pop-psych diagnosis tells me that Sullivan’s Catholicism is all tangled up with his feelings about his Catholic mother. Bad enough to break her heart with his gayness and childlessness–breaking it again with uncatholicness would be a step too far. So he has to justify hanging onto to it, so he internalizes it and waxes glib and vague when challenged. He keeps saying his next book is going to be about faith. I wonder if he’ll ever be able to bring himself to finish it, or whether the crap will keep splashing back off the keyboard and hitting him in the face. I bet if he ever does write it it’ll be chock full of sunsets-and-deep-feelings-therefore-God poppycock.
Anyone who thinks that Sam Harris is a “theist” necessarily must equate “deep feelings” with “god”.
(subscribing)
Sullivan doesn’t like the “contempt and disrepect” toward religion that he sees coming from Dawkins and other New Atheists. (Do recall that Sullivan is the man who, when I said that many people took the story of Adam and Eve literally, asked, “Has Coyne read the fucking thing?” (Sullivan’s view is that that story “screams parable,” and was never meant to be taken as literal truth). I’d aver that that characterization of me shades a bit toward contempt.
—
Never mind his characterization of you – he’s displaying “contempt and disrespect” towards the large percentage of Christians who actually do take that story literally. Mote, beam, etc.
I think it’s funny that practically all of those complaining about the New Atheists have to throw the rest of their co-religionists under a bus to make their point. The “sophisticated” have to describe the literalists as stupid, and the literalists have to describe the sophisticated as atheists.
Good point!