When I came in this morning, I was all set to spend a lot of time addressing John Gray‘s piece in Tuesday’s Guardian, “What scares the new atheists.” (Subtitle: “The vocal fervour of today’s missionary atheism conceals a panic that religion is not only refusing to decline – but in fact flourishing,”) And then, before I started writing, I saw these tw**ts from Sam Harris:
And the second one lifted a huge burden from my shoulders! Gray’s piece is not worth reading, is not important, and therefore is not worth analyzing. It’s not only too long and makes no new arguments, but is also terribly written. Gray has yet to master the art of writing lively (or even readable) prose, and thus he begins his piece like this—a lesson on how not to draw the reader into your article:
In 1929, the Thinker’s Library, a series established by the Rationalist Press Association to advance secular thinking and counter the influence of religion in Britain, published an English translation of the German biologist Ernst Haeckel’s 1899 book The Riddle of the Universe. Celebrated as “the German Darwin”, Haeckel was one of the most influential public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; The Riddle of the Universe sold half a million copies in Germany alone, and was translated into dozens of other languages.
Read the blasted thing yourself; I won’t waste much time on it. His points are that religion is on the upswing (??), that atheists are ignorant of atheist history (same old same old: we haven’t fully absorbed Nietzsche’s atheistic dolor), and that a disbelief in Gods doesn’t necessarily lead to a good, liberal state. The whole sodden mess can be summed up in one bit:
The answer that will be given is that religion is implicated in many human evils. Of course this is true. Among other things, Christianity brought with it a type of sexual repression unknown in pagan times. Other religions have their own distinctive flaws. But the fault is not with religion, any more than science is to blame for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or medicine and psychology for the refinement of techniques of torture. The fault is in the intractable human animal.
No, he’s wrong about the similarity of science and religion. Religion is more at fault than science, because, unlike science, religion often comes with both a tendency to missionize and with a moral code: a toxic combination that guarantees bad stuff.
You can see my history of differences with the atheist-bashing Gray by doing this search. But I’m tired of the man and find his pieces unspeakably boring. I’m so happy to write about other things today. Of course Gray has a new book to sell, which is why he wrote this over-long screed in the first place.
If he wanted to know what scares new atheists, he could try asking some.
I think the thought of him coming to ask questions would be one thing that does scare new atheists.
It was good how he godwinned at the start. Gave a good hint the piece wasnt worth it.
Although looking at the comment count the Guardian will be happy with the click count.
The Guardian has no more credibility on this issue then does Fox News.
Consider this screed:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/25/i-am-an-atheist-but-not-joining-atheism-movement
“Partly, that’s because it’s hard to avoid the white men ruining it for the rest of us by using atheism as just another platform for a macho power struggle. Atheism offers no guarantee of other shared ideas or philosophies – and when white male atheist leaders and communities act racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic, I find myself wishing that there were another way to describe my non-beliefs.”
-Jaya Saxena
That’s just naked prejudice.
This is a common stance that I find on the internet these days. I saw it a lot after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Commenters who hated the crime “BUT” also didn’t support white men “punching down” at minorities. It’s not even the message they necessarily oppose – just the messenger.
I read the same as well. It’s Social Justice Warrior nonsense.
The title says it all— he has no clue what he’s talking about. Religion IS declining (at least in the US) and the data backs this up. That is all you need to say to point out how inane this piece is. (Note the rise of “none” in religion over time http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx)
I thought a banana was the atheist nightmare.
But a melon is an atheist’s friend!
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I read it last night and kept thinking that he should have done the research of talking with more atheists. Most of what he wrote was easy stereotyping that had little connections with me or the atheists I am close to–who all know a great deal about religion, apologetics, and a lot about atheist history and philosophy. I guess he meant to attack a science-y subset of hipster atheists with this hit piece, but it comes off as stodgy bigotry And that’s a real shame, because for all the bad things bigotry is, it should always at least be lively.
Gray is a former Thatcherite, and I’m surprised the Guardian publishes the writing of someone whose politics are at bottom deeply conservative–-meliorism and all enlightenment thought are anathema to Gray (though he obviously enjoys their comforts!) and his views on the hopelessness of “the intractable human animal” are a mix of nihilism and masochism (which might explain their appeal to parts of the Western intelligentsia).
His glee at the supposed resurgence of religion is based on false premises. Both Europe and the US have grown less religious in the past decades (would the New Atheists’ books have been bestsellers in the 80s?), and Islamic terrorism is less a resurgence of religion than its angry death-throes against modernity. That religion persists in many parts of the “developing world” is par for the course–developing middle classes and the bourgeoisie have often been religious in a manner more standardized and stuffy than working class or folk religious practice. When it comes to religion, history moves slower than most people, including Gray, presume.
There’s an excellent deconstruction of Gray’s curious political history in Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World, which is worth buying anyway, both as a staunch defense of Enlightenment values and a very funny catalogue of all the daft superstitions and fads that have wormed their way into modern culture.
I think the new atheists scare John Gray. He seems to waste an awful lot of time worrying about straw men.
No, the problem is not that religion “brings in” poorly reasoned beliefs. The problem is that it celebrates poorly-reasoned beliefs and then acts surprised when this inevitably gets out of hand.
One could even say it preserves them, like a time capsule. It even codifies them.
Other social constructs do that kind of thing too. But religion is really good at it because of how prevalent and all encompassing it is, how central to individual self identity / image it is, and because it is so highly evolved to maintain power and authority.
Celebrates, yes. Codifies, yes. But implicated in many human evils? Sexual repression is a primary tactic and objective of Xtianity!
If one thinks, as Mr. Gray implies, that sexual repression is evil, then what is the writer defending? a somewhat evil enterprise?
Sexual repression is the major dealbreaker for many, and a primary criticism for nearly all, people who deconvert (or never have religion in the first place) – because it’s “ridiculous” or “undesirable” or “unjust.” If a person thinks it’s actually “evil,” then focus on that and leave the non-repressing atheists alooooone … !
By “implicated in many evils,” I now think saying repression is evil, per se, but that repression is the root of, say, priest pedophilia, or the guilt and shame brought upon homosexuals and even little boys who masturbate.
Still. It’s beyond defense.
Thanks for the warning. I have better things to do.
I’d already read it …
But Ron saved me from the other piece.
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I believe Sam Harris said it all in the fewest words.
Oh, by the way, while reading some news on line this morning – I think it was a Washington Post article, I saw an advertisement for Prof. Coyne’s new book. Click and it takes you right to Amazon.
I can think of at least one way of connecting them: a large majority of scientists are atheist, and among atheist scientists, a large number of them have liberal values.
I suspect the liberal atheist scientist (LAS) group is a majority, but I don’t know and don’t have time to Google it – and it also depends on what we mean by “liberal” values. If the majority is large, I would say there exists very reliable connection among the factors (even if this doesn’t tell us what the connection is). If the LASs are merely a plurality or a sleight minority of the population, I predict geography to be a factor, and possibly also field of study, accomplishment and qualifications (ie, being an accomplished evolution scientist in a major California city is a strong predictor of LAS-ness, and should you ask him or her, s/he can likely explain why and how the three are connected).
As Mr. Gray is asserting there are “no” reliable connections among LAS indicators, he is making either a knowingly dishonest or shamefully uninformed assertion. One would have to consult zero LASs as to whether there is a connection among the factors, or completely discount everything every LAS reports about their experience, in order to say there is “no” connection.
Angry atheist is angry!
Indeed, Gray is plain wrong here. Without science there would be not much atheism, without liberalism, science has it very difficult. They are the most important forces against ideology and dogma.
I find Gray often thought-provoking, I like that, but his writings suffer from his bad relationship with facts, and too many personal attacks.
For those getting through John Gray’s first paragraph, here is a quote from Ernst Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe (1901 English edition) revealing some of his perverse proto-Nazi views:
“In the great ‘cultur-kampf,’ [= ‘culture war’ – sound familiar?] which must go on as long as these sad conditions [of religious domination] exist, the first aim must be the absolute separation of Church and State. There shall be “a free Church in a free State” that is, every Church shall be free in the practice of its special worship and ceremonies, and in the construction of its fantastic poetry and superstitious dogmas – with the sole condition that they contain no danger to social order or morality. Then there will be equal rights for all. Free societies and monistic [atheistic and pantheistic?] religious bodies shall be equally tolerated, and just as free in their movements as Liberal Protestant and orthodox ultramontane [= Roman Catholic] congregations. But for all these “faithful” of the most diverse sects religion will have to be a private concern. The state shall supervise them, and prevent excesses; but it must neither oppress nor support them. Above all, the ratepayers [= taxpayers] shall not be compelled to contribute to the support and spread of a faith” which they honestly believe to be a harmful superstition. In the United States such a complete separation of Church and State has been long accomplished, greatly to the satisfaction of all parties. They have also the equally important separation of the Church from the school; that is, undoubtedly, a powerful element in the great advance which science and culture have recently made in America.”
This book and other Haeckel works can be downloaded at archive (dot) org.
Very nice. That Gray seems to find that threatening and or offensive leaves little doubt as to where he stands. He, and those who share his views, demonstrate a distinct lack of ethics from my point of view.
What a dreadfully dreary man. He also has a habit of turning up on Radio 4’s Four Thought(along with that other noted Two Cultures anti-rationalist Will Self) and wasting fifteen minutes of airtime with the most lifeless, sneering, omniphobic dirges.
I don’t like to spend much time thinking about such a depressing, irrelevant and frankly hateful man, but there’s a quote from Francis Wheen that I really wanted to share(it’s his response to a particularly churlish book review by Gray):
“it’s a treat to be accused of splenetic grumpiness by a man whose own jeremiads make Victor Meldrew sound like Milly-Molly-Mandy.”
I don’t believe it!
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That is a brilliant insult, even to someone who has no idea who Meldrew or “Milly-Molly-Mandy” are.
I read the first couple of paragraphs of Gray’s tedious screed yesterday, felt it was going nowhere, and quickly quickly scanned the rest to see my perception was correct. I read a few comments and most seem to conclude the same.
Victor Meldrew : youtu.be/46flaThCYhE
Milly Molly Mandy (“sweet of sugar candy”) : youtu.be/7qYe0kcmABw
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The fact that charlatans like Grey and Self pass for intellectuals in Britain makes me lose faith in the country.
Self is obviously an intelligent and well-educated bloke but I find him fantastically annoying too…
Quite. I don’t want to be too hard on the chap, but his name-dropping and use of concepts he seems only half to understand is rather irksome. Still, he’s a better egg than Grey.
His recent Radio 4 jolly to the LHC really sealed the deal for me. It was incomparably churlish and petty(never mind ungrateful).
The whole mini-series(and it was a result of a well-meaning scientist friend inviting Self to “experience the wonder” of the LHC, for free, as an honoured guest) hummed with a very particular, F.R. Leavis-style undercurrent of fear and intellectual resentment, and he came out of it looking like even more of a prize plonker than usual.
It was a telling expose of a certain mindset that seems to be relatively prevalent in the humanities(with many honourable exceptions of course).
There are many conservative, less well-educated, unacademic anti-rationalists, and they’re conspicuous in their opposition to science, but there’s also a whole world of John Grays and Will Selfs – people who are intelligent enough to understand science but really resent its power and epistemic authority and feel the need to bash it at every opportunity, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, but always with a pretence of disinterested analysis.
I don’t think the gap between the two cultures has lessened in the years since Snow wrote his essay. If anything it’s widened and the opposition has become even more poisonous. You could argue that an entire strand of modern philosophy, in the form of postmodernism, structuralism, whatever you call it, has sprung up in response to the encroachment of science onto terrain normally occupied by the humanities. It’s a kind of rearguard movement of people who feel that their authority is being undermined by science. Which it probably is. 🙂
I can’t stand people like Gray and Self. I’d rather people were open in their opposition to science as opposed to couching it in smarmy, specious selective-scepticism. At least religious fundamentalists are honest about their hostility.
Thanks PCC and Sam Harris. You have saved me time. I had planned to read the piece and respond to him later.
Jerry Coyne wrote “Gray has yet to master the art of writing lively (or even readable) prose.”
I can understand how Jerry could arrive at this view of Gray, since Gray is always harping on progressivism, saying that it is tantamount to an eschatological ideology, which is nonsense, and the fact that he sides with Karen Armstrong on religion and violence, against us atheists.
But I think that Jerry’s comment is unfair to Gray, and in the interests of discussion I’ll point readers to a few pieces that I believe are well worth reading.
The first is Gray’s takedown of the neo-Stalinist charlatan Slavoj Žižek. Many on the Left are enamored of this man’s muddled and aimless ‘theory’, but I find him to be a sinister phony. Gray’s NYRB essay on Žižek is probably the most successful attack on him that I have seen. The best part is at the end, where Gray deftly skewers Žižek’s “paraconsistent logic”:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jul/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/
The second is his review of Hitchens’ “Arguable:Essays”, in which he reviews the essay, and gives some general commentary on Hitchens’ career and ideological stances. Gray is well-informed on political ideologies, and, even if you disagree with his take on the Hitch, I found it thought-provoking:
“Reading Hitchens, one cannot help thinking of the combative and unsparing wit on display in Claud Cockburn’s journalism; but, by any reasonable assessment, Hitchens is a far more substantial figure. To fasten on his role as a celebrity journalist (as many of his critics have done) is to underestimate his achievements, because, when he leaves behind the certainties of ideology, he is an incomparable truth-teller.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/09/hitchens-trotsky-convictions
I also find it creditable that Gray had changed his mind about the maximal free-market ideology, distancing himself from the Right-wing think tanks that he had began his career in in the 1980’s.
A couple of his other pieces are also worth reading.
On Marx:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/09/real-karl-marx/
And on Hobsbawm and Marxism:
http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2011/01/marx-hobsbawm-russia-world
I never said that none of Gray’s pieces were worth reading. I said that this one wasn’t (see the other ones I’ve highlighted on this site, too), and even if it were, it would be a painful experience given Gray’s ponderous prose. I don’t know where you got the idea that I don’t think he’s ever written anything worth reading.
But given my experience, and the fact that life is short, I wouldn’t go out of my way to read much written by him.
Well, I never said that you said that Gray’s pieces weren’t worth reading. What I said was that I thought you were being unfair to him when you wrote that “Gray has yet to master the art of writing lively (or even readable) prose.” That sounds to me like a fairly general dismissal of him as a writer.
Let me clarify what I’m saying. On the subject of religion, Gray, himself a nonbeliever, takes the Karen Armstrong line on the religion-violence question, similar to Robert Wright. On the question of human progress, Gray is a detractor against anyone (Steven Pinker, AC Grayling etc), who argues that gradual, yet reversible human progress is possible. In taking these positions, his prose does indeed come out wooden. He seems to reproduce the same essay on those questions over and over in different publication.
Yet on many other topics: history, world politics, political science, ideological fashions, fictional literature Gray has proven himself to be a lucid, insightful and valuable commentator. I have just re-read the NYRB piece on Jonathan Sperber’s biography of Marx which I linked above, and I see no reason to withdraw this judgement. I’d like to invite you to have a look at the pieces on Žižek and Marx, both of which are good.
Jerry, while I agree that Gray’s writing often suffers from unclarity, it is terrifically unfair to say that his recent piece in the Guardian is badly written. It’s not. It’s clear, well-organised, and, to a large extent, I believe, true. Despite one comment above, Gray knows that religion is declining in the US, but still very strong, and I think he puts his finger on many things that are simply matters of faith for the “new atheists,” especially the idea that atheism and liberal values are necessarily related. Sam Harris thinks that openness to evidence is characteristic of both, but is that really so obvious as all that? Certainly, we would prefer liberal values, values which uphold respect for persons, freedom, etc., but in what way does openness of evidence support these values?
Indeed, one might reasonably think that liberal values inevitably foster inequities and injustices that other systems might not reflect. After all, the contrast between the wealth of billionaires and the poverty of the unemployed in America is not a very satisfactory basis for approving the liberal values which underlie (or at least supposedly underlie) American democracy and social policy. One might also reasonably think that liberal values are in some contexts self-destructive, and I think there is evidence enough for that claim.
And Gray’s point about history is not at all the “same old, same old” that you dismissively suggest. He is saying that you do not know enough about the history of atheism to know that liberal values and atheism are not necessarily related, since many atheisms have not upheld liberal values. And I could go on.
However, it seems to me (and since you don’t like criticism of your position you may want to exclude this comment) that you are simply too quick to dismiss arguments that do not agree with your own position, and that by reading more carefully you might have found more substance in Gray’s “long read” Guardian piece that you are prepared to credit. I know that feeding a blog means that you don’t have a lot of time to digest what you read and comment on (been there, done that), but it is sad, I think, when you do not at least try to take criticism seriously, and answer it with more than a casual (and in my view, completely unfounded) “bad writing, stale ideas.”
Actually, as I said above, I think that, in this case at least, Gray’s writing style is good (although he misses one subjunctive — a mood that is almost completely disused in English English), calm, clear, and reasonably expressed. I am surprised that you fault Gray here on his style, for sometimes his writing can be so elliptical, obscure, and compressed that its meaning is simply indecipherable. And, despite the shortness of life, the new atheists do need to take the history of atheism into account if what they say now is to be more than the expression of a passing Zeitgeist, unless ephemerality is what you are aiming at.
“in what way does openness of evidence support these values?”
It’s clear to me openness to evidence is vitally important to seeing things for what they are, as exemplified by the scientific approach to problem solving. Atheism is a willingness to be skeptical and refuse to believe without sufficient evidence. Sam is likely also assuming that critical thinking and reliance on objective facts and evidence is how we avoid moral traps that pervade religion – reliance on authority and the voices of gods in your head. He has written that morality can be based on science. If you accept that we should maximize the amount of wellbeing and minimize suffering, you need a method for determining what our the consequences of our actions will be. Prediction. Science. Religion generally is conservative. Critical thinking does not directly force us to liberal values, but it is certainly a necessary component.
Well said.
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Rick, are you really suggesting that, say, Christian ethics is devoid of critical thinking? If that is what you are saying, you should read some works of the medieval casuists, whose thinking is incredibly complex and critical. Since the new atheism seems to have put all its eggs into the basket labelled ‘Science’, it is hard to see how new atheist critical thinking could possibly lead to progressive causes, since there is nothing in our scientific knowledge that implies progressive moral ideals. Indeed, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out years ago, revolutions in science happen precisely because of the justified, but still undoubted, conservatism of normal science and its current presuppositions. According to Kuhn, revolutions in science take place, in most cases, as succeeding generations question and then overthrow the reigning consensus (which Kuhn spoke of in terms of the word ‘paradigm’). Religious morality does not rely, as you seem to think on “the authority and the voices of gods in your head.” This is a caricature of religious morality, which shows every evidence of being as progressive as atheism, and even, I suggest, so far as the misogyny of many atheist groups go, far more progressive. I am not counting fundamentalism as a reasonable religious position, and since new atheists seem to take fundamentalism as the bottom line of religious belief, this makes almost everything they say about religion irrelevant if not positively ludicrous.
Referring to Ant and Leigh Jackson below. Clearly Leigh Jackson is right, and it doesn’t depend on how you arrive at atheism, since the belief that there are no supernatural entities has no obvious ethical consequences. I think the liberal values of the new atheists (to the extent that they have them) are largely dependent on the development of religious culture, both Christian and Jewish, over the centuries since Spinoza, Locke, and others fired their first salvo, which undermined religious supernaturalism. Since the new atheism presupposes that religion and supernaturalism are welded together, its understanding of religion is seriously — and I do mean seriously in the sense of self-destructively — limited.
You may very well be making good sense here. I can only add that I think the program of New Atheism is largely to reduce and remove religious hegemony that surrounds us. We feel discriminated against as does any minority. We want to solidify free expression and separation of church and state so as to protect the freethinking minority. Many of us, for one reason or another, feel compelled to sympathize beyond our own victimization to work for the emancipation of others as well, including the religious. The majority try to make the case that privilege and power belong to them based on the idea that religion, historically, has been essential to civilized life, being the wellspring of morals. Atheism, narrowly defined, does not imply much of anything beyond skepticism toward gods belief. However, New Atheists (and old ones for that matter), it seems, represent a group that is willing to add corollaries based on a well developed appreciation of the shortcomings of religion and distinct advantages of science as epistemology. To discover how to live a good life we shouldn’t have to rely on unjustified claims. Is religion the source of morals? Maybe not. Certainly there is a risk to overthrowing a working system of mores, and some are unwilling to do that. But, we ask, can we safely reduce religion’s influence and replace it with democratic, secular government?
Well, Leigh, Christian morality was heavily influenced by the Stoics who, in most respects, were not theists, though they respected the traditional mores and the gods of the Empire. As such Christian morality is in many respects independent of supposed revelations. Of course, when moral issues and conflicts arise, more biblically oriented Christians will find no problem finding a verse or two here or there to buttress their own prejudices, but such attempts are very seldom successful, as is becoming very clear with homophobia and the condemnation of assisted dying, about either of which the Bible does not really speak at all. As for reducing “religion’s influence and replac[ing] it with democratic, secular government” that has been achieved in most European countries, as well as in Canada. Religion does not play an important part in Canadian governance, and politicians raise religious beliefs very seldom in political campaigns, although they can still sometimes wield too much influence in Parliament. But the truth surely is that other than the Muslim influence in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America, only the United States and some Latin American countries are heavily influenced by religious privilege. I sometimes think that the new atheism became a sensation mainly in the United States. That is probably why Dawkins does so many sales itineraries in the US. I don’t remember him even doing much in Canada. This problem of the atheist minority is a primarily American problem, I suspect.
Not too much to argue with here.
“This problem of the atheist minority is a primarily American problem, I suspect.”
In some ways we are special. Many atheists in the United States are also very concerned about religious privilege elsewhere. It affects everyone with a conscience and any sensitivity. What happens in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Even Canada (where, until recently, there was no right to die). Europe is doing much better, but the developing world is awash in woo to such an extent that it may take generations to reach European status.
In the States there is a constant battle for power with the Christian Right always threatening to screw things up. There is a need for liberals, atheists, progressives, naturalists, to remain vigilant and engaged until a balance is restored.
“Since the new atheism seems to have put all its eggs into the basket labelled ‘Science’”
No, not really. Only our epistemic eggs.
“there is nothing in our scientific knowledge that implies progressive moral ideals”
Isn’t there? I don’t think you’re reading widely enough (or paying enough attention to germane discussions on this website). Evolutionary psychology (nascent, and not without its flaws), game theory, experiments that demonstrate “moral” behavior in other primates, &c.
I really don’t see the relevance of your comment about Kuhn. (In any case, there are several substantive criticisms of Kuhn’s model.)
So what !*does*! religious morality rely on? !*How*! does it progress? Does thinking about morality have to be “incredibly complex” to reach valid conclusions?* Your comment elsewhere – “Christian morality was heavily influenced by the Stoics” – is telling. Why !*should*! religious morality be influenced at all by anything outside that religion? Is there any aspect of religious morality shared by secular, humanist morality that originated !*wholly*! within religion?
* And I take it that you were using “casuist” in the sense of “a person who resolves moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to particular instances” rather than “a person who uses clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; a sophist”!
“Referring to Ant and Leigh Jackson below. Clearly Leigh Jackson is right, and it doesn’t depend on how you arrive at atheism, since the belief that there are no supernatural entities has no obvious ethical consequences.”
Well, clearly you are wrong. There are very obvious ethical consequences. It means we have to re-evaluate our ethics from first principles rather than relying on divine rules (or do you discard the Ten Commandments from progressive Christianity? But that was not my point any way; you’ve put the cart before the horse.
“Spinoza, Locke, and others … undermined religious supernaturalism. … the new atheism presupposes that religion and supernaturalism are welded together”
That’s not a presupposition, that’s an empirical observation. Your frequent appeals to Dworkins (for example) are quite irrelevant when it is plain that supernaturalism is very much a part of most believers’ religion – certainly most Christians’ religion. Or are you really claiming that the majority of practicing Christians do not believe some or all of: the miracle of Jesus’s conception; the miracles Jesus performed; his bodily resurrection and ascension; the promise of life everlasting? (And how many practicing Christians know, or care, who Spinoza and Locke were, or what they wrote?)
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“That’s not a presupposition, that’s an empirical observation.” Ever heard of Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc.? There are no obvious links with the supernatural (at least in terms of supernatural entities) in these religions (at least in some of their forms), and many early religions thought of the gods as much more human-like and down to earth (the Greek gods, after all, dwelt on Mount Olympus), rather than supernatural, though certainly superhuman.
What you are speaking about is American fundamentalism, and I am quite prepared to acknowledge that science has driven conservative forms of religious belief in the direction of supernaturalism. It has, however, driven more liberal forms of religious belief towards some form of non-realism, in which gods and their consequences are human creations, but none the less valuable for that (see Lloyd Geering, Don Cupitt, Richard Holloway, Graham Shaw, Gordon Kaufmann, etc.) So, the new atheist claim is an empirical observation of a deliberately anti-scientific religious trend which is, from the standpoint of religious history, both extreme and histrionic.
Please, Eric, don’t patronise me You know perfectly well, for we’ve had this out before, that I’m aware of these other “religions”. And you’re hedging when you add the qualification “at least in supernatural agencies” – any religion that posits a soul or reincarnation has obvious links with the supernatural. Confucianism and (say) Zen Buddhism are better described as philosophical life-stances. In any case you know full well that gnu atheism focusses most on the Abrahamic religions.
I doubt that the Ancient Greeks saw their gods as supernatural given that that distinction wasn’t made until millennia later. But when you look at the acts that were ascribed to these “much more human-like” deities you simply cannot deny that they are supernatural. Unless you think that turning into a shower of gold and impregnating virgins is consistent with the laws of physics?
“What you are speaking about is American fundamentalism”
Bollocks! Those beliefs are the beliefs of mainstream practicing Christians — beliefs that are affirmed every Sabbath by all those who recite the Nicene Creed: “by the power of the Holy Spirit, [Jesus] became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. … he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again … he ascended into heaven …
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” (Or are church-going Christians and their pastors mealy-mouthed hypocrites?)
And look at the RDF Ipsos-MORI survey of UK citizens that identified as Christians in the most recent census (bearing in mind that only 78% or them regarded themselves as at all religious, no more than 47% of them attending church at all and no more than 63% ever prayed – so the following figures are based on a total that clearly includes a significant proportion of non-practicing and non-religious “cultural” Christians).
• 63% believe in heaven to some degree
• 41% in hell
• 71% in Jesus’s resurrection (39% spiritually rather than bodily, but that’s still supernatural!)
(The figures are likely rather higher among practising Christians.)
“more liberal forms of religious belief towards some form of non-realism, in which gods and their consequences are human creations”
This really seems to be a minority view amongst Christians in the UK. At least 54% of the survey respondents believe in a personal God. (Another 10% thought there may be “some kind of supernatural intelligence” and a further 22% though of a pantheistic or deistic God. 6% don’t believe in God. These are likely mostly non-practicing Christians.) No more than 3% (“None of these” plus “Prefer not to say”), then, would think of God as a “human creation”.
Given such figures – in the UK, hardly a fundamentalist stronghold! – dismissing new atheism as focussing narrowly on an “extreme and histrionic” religious trend is just a nonsense.
I doubt that many new atheists would seriously oppose religious naturalism, or religion humanism, any more than they would to any other life-stance that accepted a naturalistic world view and didn’t try to impose any dogma or scriptural authority onto the rest of society. (Compare Jerry’s remarks about Quakers in the past.)
But you have to do more than reel off the names of a bunch of Sophisticated Theologians™ to show that this kind of liberal religion accounts for any more than a tiny minority of practicing believers within any of the Abrahamic (or any other historically theistic) traditions.
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* Of course, impregnating virgins is consistent with the laws of physics, it’s just doing so as a shower of gold that is not.
Don’t I know it! I never could get any women to get in with me.
Of course, Ant, I know that the new atheism concentrates on the so-called Abrahamic religions. So much the worse for the new atheism, since the religion new atheism seems to have in mind is basically America fundamentalism, which has gone through a period of intense missionary activity over the past few decades. American fundamentalists send “missionaries” to Bermuda, which has more churches per square mile than practically any other place on the face of the earth. And their influence in Britain and Australia is not negligible. My point simply is that what the new atheism takes as characteristic of religion is American fundamentalism and its offshoots. Sure, by all means, rail against that if you like, but it is short-circuiting a discussion which has more complexity, subtlety, and (dare I even use the word) sophistication than that. Pretending that Confucianism and Buddhism are not religions is pretty shoddy methodology. Confine religion, if you like, to one of its most egregiously silly manisfestations, easily demolished, and you have not even scratched the surface of religion. The trouble is that new atheists use the sneering ‘Sophisticated Theology (TM)’ to avoid treating the phenomenon of religious with some seriousness, which is precisely Atran’s point about the new atheism: its simple failure to use scientific methodology to understand religion, its origin, nature and function.
By the way, repeating the Nicene Creed on a regular basis (which is done exclusively by ‘catholic’ churches like the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, etc.) is not necessarily giving literal meaning to the terms used within the creeds, since this includes very complex ideas deriving from Greek philosophy and is arguably inapplicable today. It is like singing the national anthem, and expression of continuity with those who have gone before. I don’t know very many people who understand what they are saying when they say that Jesus is homoousious with the Father, for example, which would take them on an excurus through Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and his idea of substance (ousia), which simply has no obvious application today. And asking survey questions scarcely gets to the bottom of what people really believe, since they are phrased in such a way that they invite “believers” to answer in one way rather than another, without really knowing what the options portend in minds such as yours, who take their answers to be clear expressions of what people really believe. You can’t find that out by handing out questionaires and doign surveys, which refracts beliefs through the prism of the survey design. Even you should know that.
It’s answers like yours, by the way, that have convinced me that the new atheists have nothing relevant to say about contemporary religion, or what they sneeringly call “sophisticated theology” without even bothering to read and attempt to understand the kinds of alternatives that are available to those who still find in religious belief some overall sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, while being very unsure of what the traditional beliefs commit them to. There are plenty of non-supernatural versions of Christianity out there, and all the new atheist can say is that they are not living up to their expectations of what religion is, and therefore they are somehow being unfaithful. It’s getting really tiresome listening to the new atheists and their own religious presuppositions from which they think they have freed themselves. In some cases, where atheists come out of a fundamentalist background, there might be some truth to this, but in general there is more variety in what constitutes religious belief that the new atheists even bother to contemplate. Which is why our exchanges are basically pointless.
(WordPress ate a longer comment; I’ll make a few points separately.)
Why should new atheism “attempt to understand the kinds of alternatives that are available to those who still find in religious belief some overall sense of meaning and purpose in their lives”?
What “the” new atheism focusses on more broadly is theistic religion or, a little more broadly still, supernaturalistic religion, which accords some privilege to faith, revelation, scripture, “papal” authority, and so on as ways of knowing over rational, evidential methods (whatever label we might give to that: “science, broadly construed”, hereabouts), with results that can be detrimental to the individual, their family and friends, and society at large.
As long as those alternatives accept (a) an asymptotically naturalist world view consistent with the findings of scientific inquiry and (b) a secular society, I don’t think that new atheism *needs* to concern itself with them.
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PS. If we can’t rely on questionnaires and surveys to determine what people believe, how can you know or demonstrate to us that these alternative, liberal, non-supernatural religions account for any more than a small minority of believers?
(2) You exhort new atheists to stop sneering at Sophisticated Theology™ and start treating the phenomenon of religion with some seriousness.
But you (and Attran) can’t have it both ways. To admonish us for our “failure to use scientific methodology to understand religion, its origin, nature and function” actually justifies our sneering at Sophisticated Theology™ which itself does not use scientific methodology!
It would be great if you’d cited anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and the like, to support your claims. But the names you reeled off are (mostly; I could not find information about all of them) theologians, not scientists.
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(3) You continue to assert than Confucianism and all forms of Buddhist are religions. You criticise me for “pretending” that Confucianism and Buddhism are not religions and calling such “pretence” out as a “pretty shoddy methodology”.
Well, Eric, it’s not a “methodology” at all, just a natural and unaffected observation that that distinction is made by others cleverer than me (or you?), such as Anthony Grayling, and – more importantly! – by Confucianists and Buddhists themselves!
Regarding Zen Buddhism, for example, Alan Watts, among others, is very clear on this point. The “Zen Buddhism” website says, “Zen Buddhism is not a theory, an idea, or a piece of knowledge. It is not a belief, a dogma, or a religion; but rather, it is a practical experience.” [my emphasis]
To insist that (say) Zen Buddhism is a religion seems to be a shoddy imposition of your world-view on others!
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You’re doing a yeoman’s job here, Ant, and I, for one, appreciate it.
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You miss the point. Atheism may go hand-in-hand with liberal values. History shows that it also goes hand-in-hand with tyrannical values.
Drat! That was directed at rickflick.
Well, it depends on how atheism is arrived at.
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No it doesn’t. That’s a silly claim. Doubting that gods exist is simply an aspect of scepticism regarding non-empirical entities, and anyone can do that, whether they are axe murderers or liberal philanthropists.
Yes it does. That’s a silly criticism.
Oh this kind of argumentation is easy!
More seriously, you make two assumptions: 1. That all sceptical paths are the same. (They’re not.) 2. That the psychologies of axe murderers and liberal philanthropists are the same wrt a sceptical mindset. (They’re v likely not. It’s a kind of philosophical zombie fallacy.)
My point was: If you are the kind of person that consistently applies Sams’s “openness to evidence” to the question of theism as well as to social issues you will be an atheist as well as a (social) liberal. This clearly doesn’t describe either Stalin or Pol Pot.
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… and tyrants are quite capable of being open to evidence.
Certainly, any given atheist is only obligated to disown gods. It doesn’t really require anything else. I think though that the class of atheists of any interest are those that arrived at atheism via skepticism.
Certainly Stalin and Pol Pot were atheists, but so are the Smothers Brothers. See?
Are you suggesting that Stalin’s atheism was not a result of scepticism? If so, do you have any evidence for this? Nothing at all of a moral nature follows from the fact that someone, on a basis of scepticism, has disowned gods. If you are sceptical about gods, why not be sceptical about morality? Lots of atheists are.
Why not be sceptical about morality if this life is all there is? That is a question that I would like the new atheists to address.
The answer is…….there is plenty to be skeptical about. Morality is a problem for secularists, but not an insurmountable one. Shouldn’t stop us from trying. If this is the only life we have, what would you do about it? See how much you can benefit at the expense of everyone else? That’s why we have laws. Better to get with the program, don’t you think?
“If this is the only life we have, what would you do about it?”
I can be hard headed, but I’m soft hearted. I can’t abide suffering. It’s not in my nature to inflict it deliberately. I have no purely intellectual answer.
In the context of this discussion Stalin and Pol Pot are of essential interest.
If Stalin had been raised to become a devout Orthodox Christian priest and Pol Pot was a fastidious Buddhist monk they would not have gotten involved with the lunatic fringe? Perhaps you are correct, but I don’t think you can attribute their misbehavior to being doubtful about gods. They must have had something else in common. Don’t you think?
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They were clearly sceptical about liberal morality, is the point.
They were many things.
It’s not the quality of Gray’s writing that bothers me – he’s a decent writer, although his ambivalence towards evidence makes his arguments a lot less relevant than they might otherwise be. What bothers me is the lack of rigour, of scepticism, of precision. He shows little concern for whether his arguments are actually true.
It’s a fundamentally different mindset to that of many of the writers I like and respect, one which is concerned with spinning out a particular intellectual narrative and, in its support, cherry-picking and mischaracterising on a grand scale. His writings are epistemically careless and crucially, as with all dogmatists, I can’t think of a single counterargument that would even sway him, never mind change his mind.
Arguably one of the most important books of the last few years was The Better Angels Of Our Nature, which provided an extremely strong argument against Gray’s(current…) position on societal progress. In his review of that book, Gray simply loped right past the mountains of empirical data that support Pinker’s thesis and criticised the idea of societal progress on his own, irrelevant terms.
It’s this dearth of scepticism(ironic for someone who’d probably see himself as a sceptic) and selective disregard of contradictory evidence that defines the failures in his writing. There are writers who just aren’t that concerned with the veracity of their arguments – I mention The Better Angels… because it’s a book that deals explicitly with Gray’s central argument against progress. It seriously undermines his fundamental theory and it does so with hard data, yet Gray’s response to the book’s empirical core was non-existent.
One would imagine that if Gray were genuinely interested in whether his argument was true the existence of Pinker’s book might have given him pause for thought. In fact, it would seem that if the avalanche of inconvenient data in The Better Angels… has done anything it’s actually strengthened Gray’s fervour. That is not the way a questioning, sceptical mind works, however interesting and diverting their writing may occasionally be.
Oh, please! Get real Saul! What, in today’s very unstable world situation, gives you any evidence of Pinker’s belief in moral progress? We are still poised on the brink of nuclear war, which will be the be all and end all of genocides. Besides this, we are consuming resources at a rate that will almost necessarily precipitate conflict, not to speak of environmental degradation and the violence we are doing to nature and to our neighbours. Gray’s point, so far borne out, is that we are part of the biosphere, and no more likely to control the cancerous growth of over-consumption and environmental degradation than tribes in the Amazon which, once they had exhausted a piece of forest, would move on to another location, and destroy it in turn. I can’t see any reason why Pinker’s book would give Gray any pause for thought. We are obviously destroying the earth, and it seems evident that we will not grasp the political nettle which must be grasped if we are to have any success in reversing a process of devastation that is already well under way.
Have you read the book? Have you considered the empirical data it collated, drawn from the last few millennia, that points to a clear downward trend in all the markers of violence, from rape through violent assaults, murder, childhood beatings, capital punishment and war?
The attitude you express is exactly the attitude I’m criticising. It won’t do to simply usher aside uncomfortable, inconveniently contradictory evidence with an argument from incredulity. There is absolutely nothing in your post that deals with the substance of the issue, which is whether it’s true or not, and that’s what I’m interested in. All you give are apparently incontestable assertions about how obviously and clearly fucked everything is at this particular moment – well, there hasn’t been a society on earth where a significant minority didn’t think exactly the same thing.
I find allusions to current world instability spectacularly unimpressive – everyone thinks they’re living in the end of days, especially as they get older.
The fundamental point of Pinker’s work, and the work of the historians which inspired The Better Angels…, was to actually find out if that particular brand of typical, Helena Handcart pessimism has any evidential foundation to it. The fact that you find it inherently ridiculous to suggest that it doesn’t is irrelevant. Either you have some criticism of the evidence or you don’t. As I said, arguments from incredulity, to paraphrase the great Shania Twain, don’t impress me much.
So Pinker’s data proves that humanity will make steady progress to infinity, with no war to end all wars ever? The constellation of runaway, uncontrollable, capitalism-cum-globalisation, global warming; Putin, China, the Middle East, Islam in turmoil, is guaranteed to sort itself out just fine.
Pinker’s book tells us that? I don’t think it does you know.
Leigh Jackson: Pinker’s data doesn’t PROVE that a meteorite the size of Pluto won’t impact the Earth. It does show that humanity does gradually learn and improve it’s expectations of our behavior. This is the trend. We are kinder to one another (though not kind enough). Generally speaking this is good news and hopeful news and it contradicts the idea that we are condemned to become more calous…no hope…never get any better.
Could a nuclear war destroy the planet? Yes, it still could. But the chances of overcoming our baser nature in the long term is better than it seemed. Take a little pleasure in good news when it comes to you. Spring is just around the corner.
Pinker does not claim that his data proves that human nature has changed, in terms of capacity for violence. It’s a possibility. The capacity we can observe to be present in recent and immediate history, given the constellation of factors I mention, is sufficient for me to be rationally concerned about a possible apocalypse being just around the corner. Faith in humanity? No, sorry, from all the evidence I know of, I can’t have such faith.
I’m sorry, nowhere did I claim that Pinker said anything of the sort about an improvement in human nature. Pinker actually says the direct opposite – that our undeelying, evolutionarily shaped proclivities have been constrained and tempered by various civilising processes.
Please don’t mischaracterise me and please don’t start strawmandering about a ‘faith in humanity’ or ‘steady progress to infinity with no war to end all wars ever’. I haven’t said anything that could be characterised in such a ridiculous way.
The argument is about whether human progress is a chimera. The data suggest it isn’t. That is all.
I have not mischaracterised you. You wish to confine the discussion to one issue.
There are two substances of issue. One is what Pinker’s book says about evidence from the past; the other is how that evidence relates to the world as we find it today and where it may or may not be going.
Pinker provides evidence to suggest a reversible trend in violent behaviour over the course of several thousand years of human history.
He makes no scientific prediction as to the likelihood of massive scale human violence in the near future. He makes no predictions for the distant future.
He makes a rough and ready guesstimate of about 10% for an episode resulting in one million deaths over ten years in the near future, but says that nobody can really know.
What difference does the immense capacities of modern technologies of death mean for our long term future? Societies of the past didn’t have technologies capable of destroying the planet. Can there be any serious doubt that at some point in the last 50,000 years they would have been used, if they had been available? Every weapon will find its use. The one country to have used the atom bomb was one defending liberal values. Ironic, eh? Had Hitler and Stalin come to power in possession of the atom bomb, would we still be here? Just how bad will global warming be? What will a world with China as a more powerful state than the rest of the world combined, be like? Will Israel nuke Iran before Iran nukes Israel? Will a terrorist nuke materialise?
I see a world with many real and extreme human threats to life on earth. You dismiss these as idle fears? I ask because it appears that you may do so from some of your comments. An important point in Pinker’s book (I in no way implied any contradiction by you) is that he doesn’t believe that the human capacity for violence has changed – human nature remains what it was in our so, so violent historical past.
IOW, Mr Hyde hasn’t gone away. He’s merely waiting for the right combination of circumstances to reappear. This is inevitable. It’s only a question of time. There will be those who prefer to bury their heads in the sand, of course.
I don’t really know what you’re talking about I’m afraid. I reposted two absurd quotes that were made in response to my post, neither of which, by even the most imaginative fantasist, could have been construed as representing my position. When people rustle up asinine straw men I tend to glaze over, and when they subsequently deny having done so altogether I lose interest almost entirely. Either you have an argument against my stated position or you don’t. I’ve made my position as clear as I can in the last few sentences of my last post. If you’re going to invent your opponent’s position and argue against that I’m not interested.
Well, yes, I have read the book, Saul, and its use of “evidence” is impressive. Basically, the book takes its departure from the so-called “long peace”, since the end of the Second World War, and argues that this is (and is likely to be) a long term trend. But then, suddenly, 9/11 supervened upon Pinker’s long peace, and we have been effectively at war since then. Even the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of communism have not produced the results expected, and we are, if anything, closer to nuclear war now than we ever were.
But we need to remember that Pinker’s thesis was written about a peace that was “enforced” by the threat of mutual annihilation. What is remarkable about that is that he speaks of us as sitting on a bomb that can blow us to smithereens, and perhaps bring the human experiment to an inglorious end, and can still speak about peace. My point of view is not the result of growing older, but is based on a strategic assessment of the present world political and military situation.
I was perfectly open to Pinker’s thesis, and found it convincing at first, but on reading it seems so much fantasy. The doomsday clock has now been set to two minutes to midnight, and the constant warfare (not to speak of American state terrorism by the use of drones) that is taking place in so many places Africa, the Mid East, the growing Chinese military and its threat to the stability of the Far East, the vast displacement of peoples, the use of torture (I never thought I would see the day that the US would resort to torture, in defiance of all its international obligations, or the use of weapons of terror), does not give us great reason to hope. And when you add to this the updating of nuclear arsenals, and the close calls that we have had over the use of nuclear weapons over the course of the Cold War, and given the danger of the proliferation of such weapons in one of the most unstable parts of the world, the whole of Pinker’s thesis seems to be much more fantasy than reality.
You may find the reference to contemporary world instability “spectacularly unimpressive” and suggest that such doomsday scenarios are a sign of old age, but I am not in any way giving in to apocalyptic scenarios, I’m just looking at the evidence. Indeed, I would suggest that the kind of peacefulness that Pinker chronicles is precisely one of the causes of the present tension. It is widely believed that Europe has lost its willingness to fight for what it values, and the unreadiness of its armed forces to face a serious challenge from the new Russia of Putin is a good sign of this. Even American technology seems to have backed an ineffective fighter bomber (joint strike fighter — the F 35) just at the moment something as effective as the Russian Sukoi or even the Eurofighter is necessary for Western defence. Strategically the West is very weak, and increases the chance of necessarily falling back on nuclear weapons. You may be underwhelmed by my doubts about the relevance of Pinker’s evidence, but it is not from old age, but simply from a military strategic standpoint, given world instablity, the omens are not good.
That’s all fine – nowhere have I been quite daft enough to predict that human progress is some utopian teleological principle. Nor am I dismissing what you say as unfounded. On the other hand I don’t think it’s at all self-evident that we are in an unprecedentedly awful bind. I certainly didn’t say the progress that has been made couldn’t be reversed starting tomorrow, and nor did Pinker.
My argument was against Gray’s contention that human progress is a fantasy. The overwhelming data in Pinker’s book flatly contradict that contention, and the possibility that it could all go tits up tomorrow is irrelevant. Progress isn’t defined by its ability to continue for ever unabated.
If I could, I’d ask Gray to consider this thought-experiment – imagine he was given access to a time-machine that allowed for its user to travel up to 5000 years into the past. Now imagine that the destination in time was decided randomly, by some quantum mechanical process(just to make it all sound a little fancier), and furthermore that the time-machine only worked once. Setting aside concerns about his family, job, mortgage, etc. for the sake of argument, would he get in the time-machine? If not, why not?
Personally, for every one of your concerns about the future I can think of perfectly reasonable counterarguments, so, as I said, it’s nothing like as self-evident to me as it is to you.
Pinker’s views on what will happen in the future are extremely tentative, and are reliant on the continuance of the factors that have brought about the last few millennia of progress, factors which might peter out, but his book was not primarily a hypothesis about the future(AFAICR, only a minute part of the book is given over to that) – it was an empirically convincing riposte to the common, dogmatic claims that we have not made progress as a civilisation and are living in an unprecedentedly violent era. It would seem that neither of these are true, and they aren’t made any less untrue by speculation about what will happen in the future.
I don’t know what you mean by “the book took its departure from the so-called “long peace” since the second world war” either. The data upon which Pinker bases his conclusion are spread over at least the last two thousand years, and 9/11, in spite of its awfulness to us from our temporal vantage point, barely registers at all on the overall statistical downward trend. That’s the problem with making apparently intuitive inferences from our own, skewed historical perspective, and that’s exactly why, after all the recorded data from the past were collated, historians and laypeople alike were so surprised to find that, contrary to received wisdom, the overall, millennia-spanning trend in all kinds of violence was downwards. Lots of things are difficult to believe. That’s why we actually look at the evidence and take it seriously, even if a part of us all is metaphorically stamping its feet and stuffing its fingers in its ears.
I know you’ll disagree, but give me any of the thinkers Grey criticizes over Grey himself any day. I tend not to agree with Zizek’s rhetorical excess, though I see him as a progressivist and a humanist at heart and hence as an ally. In any case, he deserves a better critic than Grey, who reliably goes for the lowest-hanging fruit . In other words, he’s a lazy and superficial reader.
Zizek is a charlatan, but he gets press because he’s supposedly working on topics that matter to people and he’s a great self-promoter.
However, paraconsistent logic *is* a thing, and not just some blather in the line of Hegelian excesses. A paraconsistent logic is one that does not validate the inference A&~A |- B for arbitrary A and B.
What this has to do with contemporary capitalism is anyone guess, of course.
I read the thing two days ago, and yes, this:
but is also terribly written
Whether I agree or disagree with something is one thing, but it shouldn’t be so painfully hard to understand what an author wants to say. One keeps wondering, paragraph after paragraph, what the damn point of the rambling nonsense is, and at the end one is left with nothing beyond a general impression of vague and confused complaints about ‘evangelical’ atheism.
Because while a church, party or football club trolling for new members is normal and okay, but atheists trying to convince others to join is unnatural I guess?
Nonsense, what Gray wants to say in this essay is pellucid compared to some of his other writings. If you find this hard to understand, perhaps you need a lesson or two in English comprehension.
It was interesting to re-read “John Gray’s scurrilous attack on Richard Dawkins”, for his tactic then was nearly identical to that of a certain atheist philosopher here in Germany dissing Richard Dawkins. Same accusations of intolerance, dogmatism, superficiality.
And all the accusations true!
You are beginning to sound like a curmudgeon.
“are beginning” → “continue”
FIFY
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Party time, excellent!
Well, Rick, perhaps I am, but then I have read all the relevant literature, and it seems to me that Gray’s critique of Dawkins is right on the money. Don’t agree with Gray’s evolutionary pessimism (although Dawkins should), but I think he has Dawkins and the new atheists pretty well backed into a corner. He simply knows more than the leading new atheists do, and while I disagree with Gray’s necessitarian pessimism, I think he is right in his assessments of the central figures of the new atheist movement. Dawkins is superificial. I thought The God Delusion was the start of Dawkins’ critique of religion, and that something displaying more depth would be forthcoming. Instead, he has become shallower, if anything, and less informed.
One of the things that Gray has right, of course, is that once you do reduce everything to atoms and the void, everything that happens is completely necessitated, and nothing, really, has significant meaning. Language, culture, religion, science: all these become evolutionary products, and truth itself nowhere to be found. Gray is actually taking scientific causal necessity to its logical conclusion. Once you naturalise intentionality, meaning, purpose, etc., then what used to be counted the result of human creativity becomes simply part of the evolutionary phenotype of the genus Homo, and there is no spiecies Homo sapiens sapiens, since spaiens is precisely what evolutionary necessitation denies to modern human beings.
or should I have said ‘sapientia’?
It seems to me your approach to Dawkins is skewed by your presuppositions. I can’t agree. He’s not a philosopher. He’s a scientist, you know, impatient with drivel.
The thought that materialism means life the universe and everything else is meaningless has been known for a long time. Gray sounds like he just came up with the idea and is ready to go into a funk. But life goes on. Meaning is what you make of it. It’s not something you can have handed to you. And it’s something you can’t see or touch, like electricity or skeletons.
Well, of course there is a species Homo sapiens and a subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans), for here we are thinking about ourselves.
Just because we’re inherently naturalistic creatures (really a misnomer, since we’re not created!), and the activity in our brains is fixed by physics, and we lack contra-causal free will, doesn’t mean we don’t “think” – only that thinking is not quite what we might intuitively think it is and consciousness just an illusory echo of massively complex electrochemical activities.
Reducing everything to atoms and the void – really, to particles and fields, fermions and bosons, matter and energy – does not deny that these emergent properties exist, only that they do not arise from any supernatural or paranormal stuff. Just as the lack of an élan vital does not mean that life does not exist!
And human creativity is really real, for there are new things in the world because of it, even if these things are part of our extended phenotype.
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I really didn’t get past Gray’s first paragraph. He Godwinned the article there and after that it was obvious there was no point reading the rest.
Ha, ha, go Sam!
There was a great takedown of Gray in the “Nation” a year or so ago, by Isaac Chotiner, well worth looking up.
Read it – very good, thanks for the heads up.
I agree that religion is more at fault than science. Attempts to make science moral/religious are category errors. The virtue of science is not moral but epistemological. Nietsche correctly realised that post-Darwin morality was up for grabs. He didn’t claim a scientific basis for morality. For him the strongest man was entitled to force whatever morality he chose upon nature. This because all moralities are permitted in the struggle for existence. Human will is produced by nature and the strongest will is thereby naturally entitled to impose its moral values on the rest of nature. Hitler didn’t deserve to win – because he lost. His morality failed only because he lost, not because he was scientifically in error. The allies won not because of their scientifically superior morality but because of their superior will to power – more men with more weapons at their commanders’ orders prepared to kill or be killed. Thus it happens that their morality governs our lives today rather than Hitler’s. There’s nothing scientific in any of this. Nature doesn’t care who wins. It is not progress; it is the intractable nature of the animal that is human in the struggle for life – and meaning.
I don’t know whether Gray is still enamoured of Taoism. Humans do indeed require their comforting illusions.
Sorry, Leigh, none of this makes any sense. Of course, nature is indifferent to outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that we are. Nor does it mean that there isn’t a moral epistemology. Hitler didn’t deserve to win, not because he lost, but because his values were so cruel and inhuman. He might, for all that, have got the bomb first, and imposed his inhuman values on the world. The Allies won, not because of a superior will to power, but due to the industrial power of the United States, and the sheer doggedness of the British, as well as the almost limitless manpower of the Soviet Union (in addition to the vastness of Russia and its cold), along with Hitler’s megalomania and lack of strategic intelligence. And, while some may want to say that there are no moral facts (as Jerry recently did, I believe), it does not follow that morality is simply a matter of feeling. Few of us actually believe this, as the close alliance between atheism and progressive moral views that is at issue here testifies. And if there is no way that we can speak intelligibly and truthfully about value and purpose in life, then, sadly, John Gray is right, and we are merely storm tossed on the unruly sea of nature and its necessities.
Ah, I missed this. Thanks. If that is what Gray thinks, then he and I are in total agreement.
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There’s an excellent point made in a letter in the Grauniad today which refers to Gray’s “sealed-room philosophy”.
Lots of take-downs here…
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/new-atheists-not-scared-but-are-angry?
I take encouragement from those comments. Thanks for the link.