Dawkins and Free Speech
Richard Dawkins is dealing with a backlash. This time it isn’t from theists.
The prominent atheist faced a torrent of abuse from outraged fans after he announced that all further postings to the discussion forum on his website would be tightly moderated to ward off what he called “something rotten” in internet culture.
Jesus the invisible babysitter
Here’s another video from “Big Think”. This one features actor Ricky Gervais explaining why he’s an atheist.
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.
Taking on Dawkins
I hadn’t heard of Terry Eagleton before. I’ll definitely have to check his work out. Especially his review of Richard Dawkins The God Delusion.
Reading the first sentence of Terry Eagleton’s review of The God Delusion in the October 2006 edition of the London Review of Books was not unlike watching a gunfighter kicking over a table of cards in an otherwise well-ordered saloon. “Imagine,” fired Eagleton, “someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”
The always provocative Penn Jillette
Penn (of Penn & Teller) on the difference between an agnostic and an atheist.
Black atheists
A new category for “out of the closet”.
Moving away from superstition
British Philosopher A. C. Grayling has a short essay on religion and moving away from superstition.
What religious people mean by “god” means nothing to me beyond an incoherent cluster of concepts from which the aforesaid folk choose the subset most convenient to themselves.
He closes the essay by saying:
I would wish people to live without superstition, to govern their lives with reason, and to conduct their relationships on reflective principles about what we owe one another as fellow voyagers through the human predicament – with kindness and generosity wherever possible, and justice always. None of this requires religion or the empty name of “god”. Indeed, once this detritus of our ignorant past has been cleared away, we might see more clearly the nature of good, and pursue it aright at last.
A.N. Wilson’s journey
I didn’t realize that A.N. Wilson wasn’t always an atheist. He’s now a theist (again). I just read about his journey on Wikipedia. But it was his article on the New Statesman that reflects lots of the comments on the class Forum and in class.
For a few years, I resisted the admission that my atheist-conversion experience had been a bit of middle-aged madness. I do not find it easy to articulate thoughts about religion. I remain the sort of person who turns off Thought for the Day when it comes on the radio. I am shy to admit that I have followed the advice given all those years ago by a wise archbishop to a bewildered young man: that moments of unbelief “don’t matter”, that if you return to a practice of the faith, faith will return.
When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.
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.
Atheist and church musician
This isn’t so surprising. I had a roommate in college who was a atheist and a church musician. I couldn’t do it. But it’s an interesting relationship to be sure.