I know it’s an overused trope to say that “fundamentalist” atheists like Richard Dawkins are mirror images of the fundamentalist Christians they despise, but when Dawkins starts crusading against Harry Potter books it’s pretty hard to resist.
Category: Atheism
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The progress delusion
It’s become commonplace to observe that atheism can display many of the same traits as the religions it criticzes, but British political thinker John Gray is a master of exploring the quasi-religious themes in the myth-making of secular modernity, something he’s done for everything from communism, to global capitalism, to human uniqueness, to the idea of progress itself. Here he takes on the “new atheists” (via The Topmost Apple).
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Illiberal atheists?
Damon Linker – who attacked the Religious Right in his book Theocons – accuses the “new atheists” of promoting an illiberal version of atheism that seeks to stamp out religious belief, rather than a more generous-minded skepticism that Linker thinks goes better with liberal politics.
To the extent that atheism advocates using state power and other quasi-official channels of influence to eradicate religious belief it is being illiberal and would likely invite a similarly illiberal religious backlash. Fortunately, the prospects of, say, public schools announcing the “death” of God, as Linker claims Sam Harris wants, are nil. But to the extent that atheists simply want to convince people of the folly of their ways through appeals to reasoned argument they aren’t doing anything illiberal per se. Linker seems to think that being liberal means keeping ones deepest convictions as mere opinions in some ethereal private sphere. But this is a bad caricature of liberalism: a more robust version invites competing doctrines to duke it out in the public sphere, while creating a space where fragile individuals are protected from the excessive certainties of others.
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Flew’s conversion – greatly exaggerated?
I blogged last week about a new book published by British philosopher and atheist-turned-deist Antony Flew which supposedly details his newfound belief in God (or at least a god of some kind).
Now, via Ross Douthat, I see there’s some legitimate reason to think that Flew, apparently in declining health and mental acuity, may have been pushed into putting his name on a book that was heavily ghotswritten by some of his Christian acquaintances, in particular Roy Varghese, whose academic credentials seem sketchy at best. At the very least, the article casts serious doubt on Flew’s ability at this point to make and defend the kinds of arguments being attributed to him. And Douthat is right that N.T. Wright putting his name to this project is particularly unfortunate.
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The old new atheism
Philosopher Antony Flew, a longtime atheist, made headlines a couple years ago when he admitted that he had become convinced of the existence of God. He’s now published a book setting out in detail his reasons for changing his mind in detail.
Flew hasn’t to my knowledge become a Christian or any other kind of confessional believer. Though apparently this book carries an appendix by N.T. Wright making a case for the resurrection of Jesus.
Flew is perhaps best known for his article “Theology and Falsification,” a widely reprinted piece which argued that theological language is meaningless because unfalsifiable (excerpt here)
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Transcript of Rowan Williams talk on the new atheism
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+Rowan on Dawkins, et al.
See here for a streaming video of a recent lecture by Rowan Williams on the “new atheism.” Mad props to Richard at Connexions who was present.
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A critical but substantive faith
William Placher reviews Hitchens’ God Is Not Great at the Christian Century. He’s surprisingly appreciative, though he doesn’t shy from criticism (“The second frustration of reading this book [in addition to the factual errors], at least for a theologian, is that its author seems not to have read any modern theology, or even to know that it exists.”)
Placher ends with a call for religious “moderates” (for lack of a better term) to make their presence felt:
Many Americans today are scared of religion. Radical Islamic terrorists threaten the safety of major cities. George W. Bush assures us that God has led him to his Iraq policy. The local schools, under pressure, avoid teaching evolution. The Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles is selling off property to pay victims of priestly sexual abuse. One trembles to think that many people get their picture of faith from the “Christian channels” on television. No wonder religion has, in many quarters, a bad reputation.
I think many of us—I do not mean just trained theologians, but ordinary folks in churches, mosques and synagogues as well—have found ways to be religious without being either stupid or homicidal. We are, as the cover of the Christian Century puts it, “thinking critically, living faithfully.” Not enough of our nonreligious neighbors know enough about what we believe. We need to speak up.
Repeatedly Hitchens cites some horrible thing that some religious folks did or said and then notes that mainstream religious leaders did not criticize it. Although I do not always trust his claims, I suspect that in this case he is at least partly right. Too many of us have been too reluctant to denounce religious lunatics, and because of our reluctance we risk arousing the suspicion that we are partly on their side.
Hitchens ends his book with an appeal to his readers to “escape the gnarled hands which reach out to drag us back to the catacombs and the reeking altars, . . . to know the enemy, and to prepare to fight it.” Shouldn’t one of the lessons of this book have been that comfortable intellectuals should be more careful of using words like fight? Fundamentalists of one sort or another, after all, urge their followers to fight the evils of secularism and atheism. As the battle lines are drawn between the two extremes, it seems to me that folks like those who read the Christian Century need to put aside our obsessively good manners and shout, “Hey! Those aren’t the only alternatives! We’re here too!”
I think that mainliners often have an easier time articulating what they don’t believe (we’re not like those fundamentalists!) than what they do. We’re supposed to be “living the questions” as they say. But if Placher is right – and I think he is – this isn’t enough. There needs to be an attractive alternative to the extremes of fundamentalism and strident atheism that is committed to the classic center of Christian faith. Without that the church becomes little more than a weird kind of social club (the Kiwanis with crosses as I believe Chris put it recently), or a cut-rate social service organization.
A Thinking Reed 