Context is key!
Thanks Jason!
Where’s the gardener?
Anthony Gottlieb
The parable went like this. “Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees…They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer…insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The sceptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.”
Gottleib does a smashing job surveying the battleground: we’ve got the “New Atheists”, e.g., Richard Dawkins
One trenchant critic of the New Atheists is Terry Eagleton, a leading literary critic (and Catholic), who defines God as “what sustains all things in being by his love, and…is the reason why there is something instead of nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever.” Some find it comforting or inspiring to utter such statements. But unless they can explain what those ideas mean and how one might tell whether they are right (which Eagleton never does), this is a self-deluding comfort. A wiser response to the apparent inexpressibility of statements about God may be simply not to express them, and just get on with the gardening.
New natural law and Robert George
I’ve just finished reading David Kirkpatrick’s profile of Robert George in the NY Times Sunday. It’s probably no shock that I’m not screeching, screaming conservative. But neither am I a liberal frothing at the mouth. This goes back to my describing myself as a “thinking theist”. I want to avoid getting political here. Rather, I’m just going to share some views about the intersection of religion and philosophy.
What caught my eye, of course, was the reference to Aristotle and Thomistic thought. (Disclaimer: When I first studied Aristotle it was in conjunction with Thomistic thought. I’m in no way an enemy of Thomist thought, per se.) But as I continued to read, I saw the challenge emerge: do we rest on reason and our intellect? Or do we depend on our moral inclinations? It’s my old “faith versus reason” thing. Read more
The continuing battle between faith and reason
Richard Wolin has weighed in on the debate in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. He gives a balanced overview of the history of the debate and its past and current interlocutors. In this short article Wolin takes us through Hegel, Adorno, Habermas, Berger, Dennett, Dawkins, Taylor, and more.
I agree with Wolin when he says that:
A genuine and fruitful dialogue between believers and nonbelievers is impossible unless one takes the standpoint of one’s interlocutor seriously.
Philosophical discussion and mutual respect
I’ve watched the discussion forum devolve a bit into some sniping. (Not happy about that, but not unexpected.) In the syllabus for any “religion” course I teach I always include the “play nice” notice.
Second, besides reading and writing well, I trust that you will come to class with the ability to have an open, flexible, and inquisitive mind. Since we are, after all, discussing religious and philosophical issues, I anticipate that there will be differences of opinion among us. I expect us all to make the class a safe place in which to discuss ideas. This means that several things will not be tolerated: no swearing or vulgar language (either written or spoken), no rude or disrespectful remarks about the texts, authors, religions, or religious or non-religious beliefs of the views we’re studying, the persons in this class or the views they make or hold.
Arguing for atheism
We began reading Rowe’s “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism”. I change the poor, burned fawn to “Bambie being burned”. Love it — but only in the most philosophically uplifting way. Rowe’s essay is provacative even if he’s advocating for a “friendly atheism”. Michael Martin examines Rowe’s thesis here and it’s worth reading a couple of times.
Religious influence in America
Ken Blackwell and Christopher Hitchens recently engaged in a debate (of sorts) on the influence of religion in American history.
I feel sorry for Blackwell and it was refreshing to find Hitchens‘ not so belligerent or disrespectful. I say that I feel sorry for Ken Blackwell because he doesn’t seem able to hear Hitchens’ main point: the founding fathers were nothing like the evangelical Christians (mostly, although Christians of other stripes chime in) imagine them to have been.
Where Blackwell does make a point, and one which Hitchens stubbornly refuses to assent to, is that America’s moral principles are undeniably based on Judeo-Christian principles. They are not non-theistic, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim or any other religion.
Blackwell slips, though, when he doesn’t acknowledge the point Hitchens makes about one not having to be religious in order to be moral.
I offer the video clip as an example of the kind of debate that people have.
Falsifying the unfalsifiable
Mark Thompson writes:
…science demeans itself when it used as a proof of the non-existence of god. Science is not meant to provide unfalsifiable answers, nor is it intended to answer questions that can only admit of unfalsifiable answers. To do so is to turn the scientific method on its head. And in so doing, science demeans itself because it loses part of its very essence.
(Hat tip: The Daily Dish)
The folly of arguing?
Freddie DeBoer calls into question the approaches of “aggressive atheists”:
I think the temptation among aggressive atheists is to think that they are just a few converts away from the great crumble, that if they could just move a few more people closer to their position, they’d win the day. This is folly. There are more people who claim a religious devotion than not, in this world, by billions. There are more in this country by millions. You don’t argue your way out of niches by constantly thumbing your noses at the people who you’re trying to convert. The question then becomes, are they converting at all? Or are they merely asserting superiority?