Harris vs. Armstrong

Karen Armstrong wins this exchange with Sam Harris on civility, Harris on sarcasm, and it's a draw on righteous indignation.

SH: I can't quite remember how we got it into our heads that jihad was linked to violence. (Might it have had something to do with the actual history and teachings of Islam?) And how could we have been so foolish as to connect the apparently inexhaustible supply of martyrs in the Muslim world to the Islamic doctrine of martyrdom? In my own defense, let me say that I do get spooked whenever Western Muslims advocate the murder of apostates (as 36 percent of Muslim young adults do in Britain). But I now know that these freedom-loving people just "want to see God reflected more clearly in public life."

KA: But these abuses do not constitute the whole story. Religion is also about the quest for transcendence, the discipline of compassion, and the endless search for meaning; it was not designed to provide us with the same kind of explanations as science, but to help us to live creatively, serenely, and kindly with the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition. As such, it continues to appeal to millions of human beings across the globe. To identify religion with its worst manifestations, claim that they represent the whole, and then demolish the straw dog thus set up does not seem a rational or useful way of conducting this important debate.

Hard to see this morphing into constructive Socratic engagement, but it'll be fun to try in A&S.

compassion revisited

A while back I gave Karen Armstrong credit for being right about the centrality of compassion in all creditable spiritual worldviews, religious, secular, and ethical. But I want to be clear: she's not right to credit all historical religions with actually practicing and defending (as opposed to just preaching) compassion and tolerance themselves. They don't all do even that. Ophelia Benson, as usual, is blunt about this. Here she's quoting (and skewering) Robert Wright, whose Evolution of God is on our reading list in "Atheism & Spirituality":

All the great religions have shown time and again that they're capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don't feel threatened or disrespected.

Bullshit. All the great religions have shown time and again that when they have unquestioned power, they use it, and they don't use it for tolerance and civility, they use it for social control and for their own protection and well-being. Robert Wright should take a few minutes to ponder the tolerance and civility of the Irish Catholic church.

OK, point granted: compassion is still a goal and an ideal, not an institutional value to be found and consistently cherished in the church-centered mainstream. I agree. But Karen's still right to urge the pursuit of that goal. No reason why atheists shouldn't be happy to endorse it too.

Give Ms. Armstrong partial credit, and please sign her charter. It's not disloyal, Randians, to live for the sake of one another as well as for ourselves.

How to Do It (again)

Today on How to Do It, Michael Shermer explains how religion and evolution can live side by side in peace and harmony. It's easy: accept evolution, theists, and accept theism, evolutionists.

(Much depends, of course, on what "accept" means.)

If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe -- 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.

Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The grandeur of God's works commands awe regardless of what processes He used.

As for meanings and morals, it is here where our humanity arises from our biology. We evolved as a social primate species with the tendency of being cooperative and altruistic within our own groups, but competitive and bellicose between groups. The purpose of civilization is to help us rise above our hearts of darkness and to accentuate the better angels of our nature.

Believers should embrace science, especially evolutionary theory, for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divinity in a depth never dreamed by our ancient ancestors. We have learned a lot in 4,000 years, and that knowledge should never be dreaded or denied. Instead, science should be welcomed by all who cherish human understanding and wisdom.

This piece drew a sharp reaction from Jerry Coyne, who calls Shermer an "accommodationist" and insists that the only religion not at war with science is Deism. (And here's Shermer's reply to Coyne.)

That's the Dawkins line (though he cares little for Deism either). Karen Armstrong, on the other hand, sees no grounds for conflict and hostilities at all. That comes (she says) when we confuse "mythos" and "logos," and mistake religion to be making factual claims about what actually exists in the world. On her view, no reputable theologian ever really claimed that "God exists" (or that any of us really has a clue what it would mean to say so).

Interesting. But won't that come as a big shock to roughly 99.9% of the religiously devout?

thoughtful

Nick Kristof likes Robert Wright and Karen Armstrong, allegedly "less combative and more thoughtful" than the New Atheists. (Stay tuned for future discussions of Wright and Armstrong.)

Kristof's little grenade is mostly intended for Richard Dawkins, who insists-- not entirely persuasively, but wittily and entertainingly-- that he's not strident at all, just gently satiric.

He's plenty thoughtful here, and funny. And he's right on target with his critique of the unconscionable indoctrination of young children into traditions they cannot begin to understand. It really does border (at best) on intellectual abuse.

And I can corroborate the claim that more attention, if not always more "raised consciousness," accrues to those who care less about being nice than being noticed and taken seriously. Humanists and most atheists have been "nice" and marginal forever. They've been sitting and chilling (as Marcus Brigstocke advises the religious extremists) and getting nobody's attention.

So yes, Mr. Kristof, an armistice in the religion wars-- a move away from intolerance by all-- is a great idea. Its time will finally arrive when the extremists stop persecuting and killing the people they deem immoral, and when "thoughtful" religious moderates in every Abrahamic tradition stop forgiving them for it... not when atheists and humanists shut up.

homo religiosus

Karen Armstrong said nice things about Richard Dawkins to Terry Gross, maybe it's time for atheists to lay off and try to understand her total view. Yes, some of it is silly. But some of it-- like the idea that religion comes from our search for meaning-- makes a lot of sense.

But, score this one for the barmaid.

Superman

In class yesterday we heard an earnest, sensitive, respectful explication of why, from the perspective of Islamic piety, we should not grouse about suffering. The linchpin of the argument was familiar: free will, coupled with interesting observations about gratitude, overcoming impossible adversity, and the deity having no "openings." At first I thought that meant the economy was tight all over, but it turned out to be a point about His non-animality (giving the lie to this children's book).

More seriously, the last point is one Karen Armstrong makes in The Case for God. We cannot imagine what the Deity really is, or even that He/She/It shares any attitudes or attributes in common with us. God is an enigma, a transcendent, transplendent mystery. A black box. This line of thought runs into its own brick wall. Why worship an enigma? Especially one that tests and tortures the faithful? (Michael Shermer's thoughts on the problem of suffering... George Carlin & "Mr. Deity"... theodicy & crummy dorm analogy)

The adversity and gratitude angles really are more compelling to me, personally. The human spirit is indomitable. Watching the presentation's video clip I was reminded of Chris Reeve ("Superman") and his heroic chin-up way of facing his own impossible challenge, near-total paralysis after a horse-riding accident.

But what does that have to do with God, unless believing in God is what enables the hero to persevere? I don't know if that was this amazing man's situation. It does not appear to have been Chris's, said by his brother to have been a devout atheist:

Q: Do you believe in the Lord?

A: Even though I don't personally believe in the Lord, I try to behave as though He was watching.

not nice

James Wood, criticizing both the New Atheists and some of their critics (including the literary critic Terry Eagleton) says their God-- the one they disbelieve in-- is too literal, too much like Santa in the clouds. Real believers believe in something more abstract and subtle and ethereal, less substantial and anthropomorphic. That, and the non-literal value of religious ritual and "mythos" (as opposed to "logos"), is Karen Armstrong's line in her new Case for God, too.

Doesn't this run the risk of vaporizing God into something too thin to grasp, even imaginatively?That's the old knock on the "god of the philosophers."

But if you make Him too "real," there's another risk: you won't like him. That's the upshot, for many, of considering Leibniz's theodicy and the problem of evil. Does anyone want to worship and pray to a control freak?

beyond words

Look who's reading Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins (besides that Baptist guy):

jesus and mo

elegant nonsense

The President of the Southern Baptist Seminary has written a genuinely fair and balanced consideration of Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong, in A Tale of Two Atheists...

[Armstrong] makes statements that amount to elegant nonsense. Consider this: "In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had -- somehow -- brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis." So she would have us to believe that, in centuries past, cosmology was merely therapy. She simply makes the assertion and moves on. Will anyone believe this nonsense?

No doubt.