Category: Sophisticated Theology

The incoherence of Karen Armstrong

November 18, 2014 • 2:07 pm

Karen Armstrong earns her living by making liberal believers feel Sophisticated, for she writes books and gives lectures about The Real Nature of God. And that is A God Who is Awesome But Can’t Be Described. (Yet Armstrong manages to write and utter thousands of words about that apophatic God!) How she found this out, and how she knows she’s right in the face of the majority of the world’s believers, who see God as a bodiless human, defies reason. I’ve listened to her palaver for a long time, and not only does she get acclaim and awards for it, but credulous interviewers and journalists refuse to ask her the hard questions like, “You mean God isn’t really some kind of being who can do stuff, but merely embodies Love, Longing, and Awe?” or “How do you know all this, Dr. Armstrong?”

A reader who just heard Armstrong on National Public Radio in Minnesota (MPR) sent me a link to their interview with her, along with this note.  And believe me, I feel for this person:

I’m listening to a local MPR program (Talking Volumes) with Karen Armstrong. OMG, she completely absolves Islam for everything bad that ISIS, etc. do. Listening to her well-oiled equivocations is nauseating.
 
She cries for nuance when looking at religion and will with a single sweeping statement about a single jihadi dismiss religion as a motivation for ISIS, etc.  Infuriating. And our local Kerri Miller is kissing her ass instead of asking the hard questions she usually does.

Well, the interview isn’t on the page any more (it was live), but it was apparently a rebroadcast of an interview a week ago in which Kerri Miller talked to Armstrong at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. The MPR page has three YouTube videos of the interview, which obviously went on much longer than the ten minutes of videos. But you can get a sense of Armstrong’s “views,” such as they are, in this clip, where she talks about THE REAL NATURE OF GOD:

Note the waffling and repeated recharacterization of what God is. First she equates “God” with the pantheism of Einstein—that is, “God equals the vastness of the universe which incites wonder.” Fine, I’m down with “absolute awe” of the universe, but I don’t need anything “divine” to gawk at. Then she says, “We find the divine in one another,” so now “divine” becomes equivalent to each person’s unique characteristics, not the vastness of the cosmos. Note how she also sneaks in religious words, talking about “the sacredness of each person” and the “sanctity of the individual” (which, by the way, is supposed to prevent us from mocking their beliefs). She argues, as one Muslim cleric asserted, that each person represents a particular instantiation of God.

Armstrong manages to have her cake and eat it too by using religious terms to describe humanistic notions. That’s why the public and press love her.

But what “god” is she talking about? That’s where the interviewers never go after her, so eager are they to osculate faith and avoid alienating liberal believers. They never try to pin her down on what the hell she’s trying to say. I suspect that if they did try, she’d revert to apophatism and say that she can’t characterize God in words.

This is hopelessly contorted theobabble, and it amazes me that people not only listen to this, but seem to lap it up, and rarely criticize it. In fact, I think Armstrong’s views are dangerous, for by failing to criticize religion—or by insisting that religiously-inspired malice is not characteristic of “true” religion—she provides a flak jacket for believers, insulating all faith from criticism.

Give me a good honest fundamentalist over Armstrong any day. At least you can figure out what they’re trying to say!

Intersectional faith

November 10, 2014 • 10:00 am

This cartoon, from reader Pliny the in Between and posted at his site Pictoral Theology, is the answer to all those liberal apologists who tell us that “all faiths are at bottom really the same.” (That’s stupid on the face of it!). I like the liberal characterization of theistic evolution at top left.

Toon Background.018

~

 

Tonia Lombrozo at NPR: Factual and religious “beliefs” may differ

November 1, 2014 • 1:11 pm

Okay, I’m not going to dissect the article cited below for two reasons. First, I’m working on the copyedits of the Albatross, an onerous and tiring task. But the main reason is that a colleague and I are writing a scholarly critique of the paper , and it’s wearisome to state the arguments twice. But the paper needs to be called out, for it makes the claim (not supported by its contents) that belief in religious “facts” (like that of Genesis or the Resurrection of Jesus) is completely different from belief in other kinds of facts, so you can believe in contradictory facts simultaneously. You can, for example, simultaneously accept that the Earth and its species are 6,000 years old and also billions of years old.

The paper, published by Neil van Leuuwen, appeared in Cognition (reference at bottom) and is behind a paywall, though judicious inquiry might yield a copy.  What you can read is an accurate popular summary  written by Tonia Lombrozoa on the National Public Radio (“Faith is Our Middle Name”) website culture & cosmos“: Are factual and religious belief the same?”

In short, Lombrozo supports van Leeuwen’s contention that religious peoples’ beliefs are really “fictional imaginings” rather than firm beliefs about reality. Religous beliefs are also said to differ from “scientific” beliefs in two ways: religious beliefs operate in a more “restricted context”, and, unlike factual claims, they are immune to refutation. The last bit, of course, does differentiate religious from scientific beliefs (I’m using the words “scientific beliefs” in a loose sense), but that’s because religious people won’t accept counterevidence: the disparity is not in the nature of beliefs, but in the psychology behind them. (Religious beliefs are immunized against disproof because they are accepted a priori on emotional grounds.) But I do take issue with the first two differences. If religious beliefs really are “fictional imaginings”, for instance, then why do so many people try to force creationism into the public schools, or look for Noah’s Ark or Jesus’s tomb, or firmly believe in an afterlife? And who are they praying to? What are Islamic martyrs dying for—a fictional paradise?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You can read Lombrozo’s piece in about five minutes, and see for yourself what an intellectual mess it is—accurately reflecting the paper itself. Go ahead and post your comments below; I promise not to steal anyone’s ideas—at least not without permission!

Lombrozo’s piece and van Leeuwen’s paper are both intended, I think, to buttress religion in a world that increasingly shows that belief in Iron Age fictions is just silly. And the support of faith is, of course, one of the underlying themes of National Public Radio, which I see as unwilling to go up against religion because it’s scared of losing government funding.

h/t: Howie

_____________

Van Leeuwen, N. 2014. Religious credence is not factual belief. Cognition 133:698-715.

A new view of hell: “Conditional immortality”

October 13, 2014 • 8:49 am

An article in the October 10 New York Times, “Tormented in the afterlife, but not forever,” shows us how theology “progresses.” After thinking about the issue for a few millennia, some theologians have decided, based on rumination and judicious Biblical exegesis, that Hell might not consist of eternal immolation after all.  Maybe you just fry for a while and are then extinguished:

[Minister and Christian publisher Edward] Fudge’s inquiry into the nature of damnation resulted in his seminal 1982 book, “The Fire That Consumes,” in which he argued that the suffering of the wicked in hell is finite, that after a time their souls are extinguished. This view, called “conditional immortality” or sometimes the more macabre “annihilationism,” is in direct opposition to the traditional Christian view that suffering in hell lasts forever.

Conditional immortality is not new — it has been proposed by Christian thinkers almost from the beginning — but it is having a moment in the (gentle, non-fiery) sun. Several new scholarly volumes about conditional immortality have been, or are about to be, published. In July, leading proponents of the theory gathered in Houston for Rethinking Hell, a conference in honor of Mr. Fudge. The group that produced the conference maintains a website, rethinkinghell.com, dedicated to its theology.

And in 2012, Mr. Fudge achieved the ultimate mark of American celebrity, the biopic. “Hell and Mr. Fudge” can be streamed in its entirety on the web, allowing one to see Mr. Fudge — played by Mackenzie Astin, best known for his childhood role on the 1980s TV series “The Facts of Life” — first as a boy, then in his college days, courting his wife, and, as an adult, doing the research that led him to renounce the traditional view of hell.

Click on the screenshot below to see the hilarious trailer for “Hell and Mr. Fudge” (you’ll have to pay to see the whole thing):

Screen shot 2014-10-13 at 5.47.22 AM

What is obvious from this trailer, and the paragraph below, is that theological “progress”, at least in this case, came simply from pondering how unjust it seems for a loving God to torment someone forever for, say, homosexuality. And indeed it would be, so advocates of this Hell Lite simply decided that Hell wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.  And, of course, they could find Biblical support for their revised theology:

Advocates of conditional immortality say that their view reflects a common-sense reading of the Bible. They point to passages like Romans 6, where Paul says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The “eternal life” of the saved is contrasted with the ultimate “death” of the unsaved. And in the Book of Revelation, Jesus refers to a “second death,” which these theologians say means the dying-again of the resurrected wicked. Their final, irreversible punishment may involve torment, but it will come to an end.

There is no limit to how these people’s ability to hang their “truths” on the thinnest string of words in scripture.  And then, like good theologians, they pretend their view of Hell was actually the traditional one all along!:

“I don’t think the traditional view became popular among Christians until the late second and early third centuries,” said Christopher M. Date, a software engineer and independent theologian who helped organize the recent conference. He believes that conditionalism was the rule for early thinkers like the second-century bishop Irenaeus, who wrote that God “imparts continuance for ever and ever on those who are saved,” while denying that same continuance to the unsaved.

And it really take theologians two millennia to realize this:

If you stop and think about it, some conditionalists say, theirs is a compassionate theology. Which is the kinder God, they ask, one who lets sinners suffer forever, or one who gives them, say, a few decades of hellfire, then administers “capital punishment” (to use Mr. Date’s matter-of-fact term)?

Well, the most compassionate God is one who doesn’t let anybody burn in hell (imagine being licked for flames for only a few minutes, much less a few decades) and then wipes them out forever. Is that compassionate? No forgiveness, no chance for rehabilitation, just some fire and then extinction?

Any hell that includes fire is incompatible with a compassionate god. And could these “compassionate” theologians tell us exactly how long God lets the miscreants suffer before he snuffs out their souls?

The article continues by saying that many “compassionate” Christians aren’t buying this: for them, hell is, as always, forever. As the piece notes, “Many Christian churches and organizations have statements of faith, which members must sign, attesting to a belief in eternal torture for the unsaved.” Yep, that’s the way to settle issues.  If science were done like this, we’d all sign statements saying that everything in the Origin of Species was literally true.

What a contrast with science, where such disputes are settled either with evidence or, if evidence is lacking, a statement that “we don’t know the answer.” Christians, however, settle the issue based on whatever seems most congenial to them, or what comports with the kind of God they imagine. In other words, theology advances by “wish thinking”: in this case, the realization that maybe a good God wouldn’t sent people to hell forever. But maybe he would. For centuries theologians have thought that, and you can support the “eternal hell” view with scripture, too.

But maybe before they start arguing about how long Hell lasts, they should look for evidence that there’s a hell in the first place. You’ll find such evidence only in the Bible, for no scorched sinners have returned to tell us of their travails. And then these revisionists might contemplate if a “good” God would even practice “conditional immortality.”

It is issues like this that makes me realize the total intellectual vacuity of theology, as well as how strongly it contrasts with science in the way it settles issues about reality.

h/t: Barry

 

~

Making a virtue of necessity: doubt as “a crucial part of faith”

September 30, 2014 • 7:35 am

On September 18 I discussed the confession of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that he had experienced some heavy doubts about God’s existence, based on God’s distressing lack of appearance on the planet. Surprisingly, though, Welby had no doubts about Jesus. I found that quite astonishing, for Jesus has meaning to Welby only as the son of God (as well as a third of the Godhead, given that Anglicans accept the Trinity). How can you doubt God and be certain about the divinity of Jesus?

At any rate, Julia Baird (an Australian opinion writer for the New York Times who also has a Ph.D. in history) has taken to her keyboard to defend Welby in a Sept. 25 Times op-ed,, “Doubt as a sign of faith.”  Her thesis is, in her words, this: “Doubt is a crucial part of faith.”

But her piece does not start off well:

Certainty is so often overrated.

This is especially the case when it comes to faith, or other imponderables.

Overrated? Wouldn’t you want to be certain that your faith was right? After all, you’re staking a lot of your life, and all of your afterlife, on what you believe. And certainty in other matters, so long as it’s supported by evidence, is what you want. (I think she’s talking about real empirical certainty, not simply one’s assertion that one is right.)

To defend her thesis, Baird first lists some religious people who have had religious doubts, including Welby himself , Mother Teresa (her diary entries on this are now well known), C. L. Lewis, Flannery O’Conner, Benjamin Franklin, and even Jesus himself, who, says Baird, cried out on the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Well, that might not be Jesus’s doubt about God’s existence, but anguish about why God didn’t save him.

Indeed, according to scripture Jesus did say that, but in only two of the four Gospels, Matthew and Mark. Here are his final words in all four gospels:

  • Luke 23:34: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.
  • Luke 23:43: Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
  • John 19:26–27: Woman, behold your son.Son Behold your mother.
  • Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:34 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
  • John 19:28: I thirst.
  • John 19:29-30: It is finished.
  • Luke 23:46: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

If Baird quoted Luke or John, we wouldn’t see that doubt, so she’s cherry-picking. Did Luke and John simply leave out those crucial words of doubt, or did someone make them up? (Baird appears to believe they are real, for she implies, as we’ll see below, that she’s a Baptist.)

But never mind. Her view that doubt is inherent in faith, is largely (but not completely) correct. How can it not be for many? If you’re committed to believing a bunch of superstition lacking evidence, and yet you’re a thinking person who bases the rest of your life on things for which you’d like evidence, then sometimes you must wonder if all this stuff is real.  That’s all well and good, but, given the nature of faith, how does one resolve those doubts? This is the question Baird avoids:

Just as courage is persisting in the face of fear, so faith is persisting in the presence of doubt. Faith becomes then a commitment, a practice and a pact that is usually sustained by belief. But doubt is not just a roiling, or a vulnerability; it can also be a strength. Doubt acknowledges our own limitations and confirms — or challenges — fundamental beliefs, and is not a detractor of belief but a crucial part of it.

This is truly making a virtue of necessity.  For there is no good way for a believer to actually resolve those doubts, for there is no evidence to appeal to. How can Welby call on evidence to convince himself that God really exists? After all, it’s that lack of evidence that raised his doubts in the first place! At least Baird admits that faith is “persisting in the presence of doubt,” that is, pretending that something exists when you’re not sure it does.

No, there are only two ways to quell those doubts. First, just decide to quietly shelve them and convince yourself that you were right all along, or conjure up some “evidence,” like a frozen waterfall or a beautiful evensong, to get you back on track.  But that is just confirmation bias. Or, you can do what Baird’s pastor does, and just say that maybe it doesn’t matter if what you believe is true, so long as it produces good things:

My local pastor, Tim Giovanelli, a Baptist whose ocean-swimming prowess has lassoed scores of surfers and swimmers into his church, puts it simply: “For Welby, myself and many others, it is not that we have certainty but have seen the plausibility of faith and positive impact it can make. In a broken world, that can be enough.”

But where does the “plausibility” come from? Doesn’t Giovanelli really mean “logical possibility”? It is the mistaking of the logical possibility (and emotional appeal) of a God for the plausibility of a God (something that Alvin Plantinga does continually, and on purpose), that mistakenly leads the doubters back to faith.

Yes, religious doubt is natural, and inevitable in rational people, but the whole goal of religion is to quash it. Granted, some, like Welby, will admit it (though I suspect that people like Al Mohler, Ken Ham, and William Lane Craig don’t have such doubts), but in the end they always decide that they were right all along—on no evidence—and plow ahead as before, like a ship going around an iceberg. I doubt that Welby’s newfound doubts will affect his sermons or public pronouncements from now on: he will certainly act as if God and Jesus exist when he talks to his flock.

At the end, Baird compares the doubts of believers with those of rationalists, quoting the mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell:

If we don’t accept both the commonality and importance of doubt, we don’t allow for the possibility of mistakes or misjudgments. While certainty frequently calcifies into rigidity, intolerance and self-righteousness, doubt can deepen, clarify and explain. This is, of course, a subject far broader than belief in God. [JAC: Really?  How can religious doubt itself  “clarify and explain” without some way of resolving it?]

The philosopher Bertrand Russell put it best. The whole problem with the world, he wrote, is that “the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

But there are two differences between the kind of doubt evinced by Baird and that mentioned by Russell.  First, when a scientist or empiricist doubts something, say string theory, they don’t go around proclaiming that it is true. They admit constantly that it is plausible but unsettled. Scientific “truth” only comes with substantial empirical verification. In contrast, the believers who have doubts, like Welby, ultimately go their merry way and forget that they had those doubts, saying that they’ve been resolved by further reflection. But reflection can’t resolve doubt unless you have a way of adjudicating the conflicting positions.

And that brings us to a crucial difference between religion and science. In science doubts are resolved by evidence. If you don’t have evidence that string theory is correct, you don’t tell yourself and others, “upon deeper reflection, I have clarified to myself that it is indeed right.” If you don’t have good evidence, you stop promoting your theory as the truth; instead, you persist in asserting that it’s undecided. But will be a cold day in July (in the northern hemisphere!) when Welby and Baird, who have even less evidence for God than physicists have for string theory, start doubting God’s existence publicly and frequently. Unless the doubts of the faithful are resolved by “deep reflection”—almost always the case—they become nonbelievers.

Baird’s article is a prime example of what I call The Great Sausage Machine of Theology: a mental appartus that converts scientific and empirical necessities—in this case a lack of evidence for one’s beliefs—into theological virtues.  And, like sausage-making, the working of the Theological Grinder are best kept hidden. By exposing them, Baird has revealed their intellectual vacuity.