After bidding farewell to blogging, Eric MacDonald decided that it’s really in his blood after all, and he’s restarted Choice in Dying, promising to contribute semi-regularly. I’m very pleased about this—though also a tad annoyed because I bid him a lachyrmose farewell on his last post. Eric’s always worth reading, for he’s erudite, thoughtful and mostly right (though he still thinks that there are ways of knowing beyond science!).
Anyway, visit his redesigned site here, and have a look at his latest post, “Radical Islamic violence or anomie and self-radicalisation?” It’s a trenchant indictment of religious “fundamentalism,” arguing that such fundamentalism falls more naturally out of Islam than other faiths.
Here’s a snippet, in which he defends Anthony Grayling against Jonathan Rée’s criticism that Grayling ignores the subtleties of Sophisticated Faith when arguing against religion:
Suggesting that religious texts can “flourish as many-layered parables, teeming with quarrels, follies, jokes, reversals and paradoxes” is all very well, and it is doubtless true. But the texts themselves, as sacred, can be used in a much more single-minded fashion, as Christian fundamentalists and Muslim radicals demonstrate, and it is this use to which religious fervour is most likely to be attached. And the point is that religion, at its worst, is a form of ideological zealotry. This is what drives religious belief. No one who thinks of the scriptures of any religion as “teeming with quarrels, follies, jokes, reversals and paradoxes” will ever capture the religious imagination, which teems with unreflective passion and fervour instead, and looks to holy writ to support actions prompted by such religious emotion. Anyone who has managed a congregation of religious believers knows this. Academic discussion of the complexities of the scriptures is all very well, but it doesn’t bring in dollars, and it is dollars and numbers of ardent believers that allow religions to flourish or to be seen to flourish. And this leads to people who murder abortion providers or blow up people who are enjoying the exhilaration of watching a marathon. And dismissing those who do such things as outliers, or as individually radicalised, simply overlooks a central feature of all religion: that it is driven by a universalising enthusiasm that gives meaning only to the extent that others share it. Fundamentalism thus lies at the heart of religion, and no amount of clever hermeneutics will change that. Religions whose texts provide the occasion for violence — as Islam does with almost monotonous repetitiveness — will in fact produce people whose religious fervour will be expressed in violent and destructive ways.
Welcome back, Eric, the Official Website Uncle™!
And there was much rejoicing.
(…hoo-ray!)
Good for him. I still hope he writes that book.
Amen.
b&
Yes, I was glad to see him back. I never did delete his entry in my RSS subscription, and was glad to see a couple of new posts appear.
Not true! I do not speak in terms of “ways of knowing”, which I think is misleading. There are fields of knowledge which are not scientific, because, while they depend upon evidence, scientific, even empirical evidence, is not the only kind of evidence there can be. So not different ways of knowing, but different fields of knowledge. For example, while history certainly depends upon evidence, artifacts, documents, and other remnants of the past, it also depends upon a level of imaginative interpretation which simply puts it beyond the scientific paradigm. That’s why Richard Carrier’s idea that Bayes’ Theorem is central to historical proof is, in my view, a non-starter.
I find that I tend to often lose a lot of respect for historians especially when they stray from the empirical. They often do so with the excuse of, “If we didn’t we wouldn’t know anything about history!”
The truth of the matter is that we actually really are ignorant of large swaths of history about which historians proclaim great confidence. Wishing it were otherwise doesn’t change that fact.
The worst such offenders are typically “historians” of first century Judaea, but they’re far from the only ones.
It is possible to have a high degree of confidence in ancient history; it’s just not possible to do so as often or as thoroughly as one might wish. We can have a great deal of confidence in the biography of Gaius Julius Caesar, for example, because we have (copies of copies of copies) of his autobiography, and archaeological digs have confirmed many of the details in his writings thus giving some credence that he is a trustworthy chronicler of events. We have other contemporary and near-contemporary accounts that also square with archaeology…but some of those are much less trustworthy in that they give equally serious treatment to the seemingly historical and the fantastic.
Now, a scientist would start widening the error bars at that point, and they’d quickly get rather wide. For some, such as Caesar, there’s still enough corroboration and overlap to bring the overall error bars in line even though some of the individual sources are dodgy…but it all hinges on the hard archaeological evidence and the demonstrated-trustworthy sources. Take those away, and you’re left with storytelling based on stories told by ancient storytellers and no way of being confident that your stories actually happened.
It is very likely that much of what historians “know” about ancient history is nothing more than the ancient equivalent of widely-beiieved conspiracy theories such as the CIA involvement in JFK’s assassination. Ancient chroniclers had lower standards than we do today, and modern journalistic standards aren’t all that hot to begin with. Trusting a gossip with overt political ambitions such as Josephus to accurately report on current affairs, for example (and never mind the obvious tampering by Christians in later generations) is especially foolish…even though Josephus is considered one of the “best” ancient sources for that part of history.
You can draw some broad outlines, perhaps, but not with any great confidence. The only types of things you can realistically be confident of are of the level of the dog that didn’t bark in the night — for example, Josephus’s silence on the Jesus incident tells us all we need to know about the fictional nature of the Gospels. But I’d be hesitant to be particularly confident about much beyond that type of gross generalization…yet many historians don’t hesitate at all to leap into the chasm of faith.
Cheers,
b&
I don’t think it is knowledge when they just make stuff up without any solid justification and claim to know. Better to show what is known and offer opinions as speculation. That way it is easy to know were future research can be best applied without needing to wonder where is a good place to start.
Imaginative interpretation might be interesting and it might in some cases be correct but it doesn’t reach the same category of knowing as the support needed to claim knowledge, I don’t think. If there is no distinction between speculation and supported knowledge we’ll find ourselves slipping around on a damned christian god slope.
But, thanks for the welcome back. I really didn’t think I would be back, to tell the truth, but I find that being connected over the internet is to be connected in a way that relationships within my immediate community cannot satisfy. There are very few amongst my friends or acquaintance with whom I can discuss the issues that concern me. Nor could I develop the themes that interest me in the detail that blogging permits. I really did not mean to fish for compliments or tearful farewells, although I was quite frankly overwhelmed by the response, and felt slightly guilty about leaving my post in the midst of a great battle. But, I have learned my lesson, and will stay awhile!
I hear ya…were it not for teh Innertubes, I’d have nowhere I could comfortably openly mock the god-botherers. Not that there’s necessarily anything past idle entertainment in doing so, but it’s still something I enjoy indulging in from time to time and that I find a useful release valve.
And, it’s given me great opportunities to sharpen my wit…just one slip-up and you’re quickly sliced to shreds. If your ego can tolerate it, there’s no quicker way to rid yourself of foolishness than by being a fool on the Internet.
b&
It’s much more than idle entertainment. People stumble upon the kind of dressing-down religion gets here and elsewhere on the net and it gets them thinking. I was one of those people.
Also, we’re probably incapable of ridiculing religion enough to exert the kind of pressure it would take to make believing all that nonsense socially uncomfortable (at least).
” . . . being connected over the internet is to be connected in a way that relationships within my immediate community cannot satisfy.”
Does that ever resonate!
I second that. I love my family and friends dearly but I don’t have rational discussions with them, it’s too painful for all of us.
The internet in general and Eric’s blog in particular are my second home.
“There are very few amongst my friends or acquaintance with whom I can discuss the issues that concern me”
I live in Indiana. When talking to my few atheist friends we check over our shoulders or wait for certain people to walk away. One of my atheist friends told me he hasn’t told anyone else because he has kids in the public schools. Another one is afraid she’ll lose business if people know she’s an atheist. If I didn’t have the interwebs I wouldn’t be the most open atheist I know here, but I’m much more closeted than I was even during my years in Texas.
It’s in such an environment that religion can be promoted disguised as science. Think BSU.
Since I am a chemistry professor and atheism is common amongst scientists, it isn’t too difficult to find fellow atheists at work – even here in Texas. Other than work, how do atheists become aware of each other (like you and your friends) if they are looking over their shoulders before speaking the unspeakable?
I think I can count myself fortunate on this one. I talk about atheism and all that stuff with my closest work friends and my wife. We have pretty good agreement on most things. I give my wife regular updates on the goings on here at WEIT and the other sites I lurk around in.
It is true though that I can really let some things ‘out’ here that I would not do in my organic life. Also no one I know except here has as much interest in arthropods.
Excellent.
It is good to to have Eric back.
Kevin
The Internet can make some things quite precious and missed.
This isn’t an indicment of any sort, but wasn’t Eric MacDonald’s blog hosted at FreeThoughtBlogs recently? I tried to look this up, but couldn’t really find anything.
Like a rock star – the ‘farewell tour’ is never the last!