Nothing Beside Remains
Thanks to Jerry Coyne for the reference to the YouTube priest, Fr. Robert Barron. You can watch the whole of his “take-down” of the New Atheists here. It’s the old odd complaint. The New Atheists aren’t serious enough. We should be, as Jerry says, lugubrious, ready to blow ourselves away because life is so meaningless. After all, says the YouTube priest:
This is really a cock-and-bull story! We do have a longing for truth, justice, peace, love, meaning, purpose, etc. etc. — no doubt about that. But this is not pace Barron, a thirst for a god or a god like being. Certainly, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others, used to feel a tension between their atheism and their search for meaning. Of course they did. Going without god is a relatively new thing, and belief in a god or gods is so deeply interwoven with the texture of a culture that it is hard to distinguish the one from the other. So, of course there was a tension, a serious concern about whether it was possible to retain the value of things while letting go of god or gods, in which value had been vested for so long.
As a consequence, the first people who began to take atheism, complete non-belief in god or gods, with deadly earnestness, not only felt the tension, but expressed it in their lives and in their writing. Seriousness was a problem. How could you be serious without god? That used to be a deeply felt problem, since seriousness itself was somehow all wrapped up in religious vestments. That’s why Robert Barron can come out with the nonsense represented by the short video clip above. And it is a nonsense, almost as nonsensical as it’s possible to be, a bit like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. That’s also why he misrepresents one of the most sceptical of the Jewish scriptures. He calls it “Qoheleth,” which is usually translated by the English word ‘preacher’ – though it is more familiar to most English speakers as the book of Ecclesiastes. For the writer of this piece of Wisdom literature, as it is commonly called, amongst which are usually included the Song of Songs, Proverbs, Job, and the Psalms (as well as the book of Sirach in what Protestants call the Apocrypha, since the Protestant Old Testament included only the books recognised in the Jewish canon of scripture, the Tanach) — life is ephemeral, and so are all the joys and accomplishments of life. The end of all, wise or foolish, is the same, namely, death. There is simply no sense, in the book of Ecclesiastes, that the writer recommends trusting in the Lord. Indeed, it is clear that he cannot ascribe eternal meaning to life at all. It all ends in death, regardless of the effort put into living life well. Of course, this is what he recommends, but part of wisdom is to live life as fully as it is given us to live. But, he says, there is a season for everything, for marriage, for peace, for war, for planting, for harvesting, for destroying things, for building things up. In the end, the only significance lies in the things themselves, and what meaning we can give to them. Barron’s claim that the preacher is a firm believer is nonsense. There is no sign that, for Qoheleth, there is any transcendent meaning to life. Life is what it is, and it comes as it comes, and we must live within the moment, and for the moment, because, in the end, as Wordsworth says in his poem on the French revolution, this is the only life we have, and the only place we will find our happiness, or not at all.
Anti-Catholicism and the Protection of Freedom
My last few posts have been about things which I only partly understand — for example, universes from nothing, the relation of science, philosophy and culture — but now I want to turn in a different direction, and change the pace of discussion. A few days ago Ophelia Benson, over at Butterflies and Wheels, brought our attention to the theocratic, totalitarian, repressive streak running through Catholicism (in her post “Donohue’s success” and a later one, “Donohue to citizens: stfu“). Ophelia links to the Network for Church Monitoring, and Chapter 15 of Stephen Mumford’s book The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a US Population Policy, under the title “The Catholic League and the Suppression of the Press Today.” The chapter goes into a great deal of detail about how the Catholic League, led by William Donohue, brings its power and influence to bear on newspapers, TV networks, and other media, should they have the gall or audacity to criticise the Roman Catholic Church. It’s a disturbing story.
Mumford speaks of the principles that guide the League’s activities:
One is revealed in a vicious 1994 attack against the New London newspaper, The Day, for an editorial critical of the Catholic Church: “What is truly ‘beyond understanding’ is not the Catholic Church’s position, it is the fact that a secular newspaper has the audacity to stick it’s nose in where it doesn’t belong. It is nobody’s business what the Catholic Church does.”
The Catholic Church, then, is supposedly above criticism. What the Catholic Church does is its own business, and no one should criticise it. This goes for dissident Catholics as well as those who have no relationship to the Catholic Church. Whether the Catholic Church engages in activities that threaten the freedom of citizens is irrelevant to the point that is being made. The church itself is above criticism, and it is not the public’s business. Should they not get the point, the League will fight for the right of the church to remain above criticism, by threatening newspapers, TV channels, etc., with mass action.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
This is the large “philosophical” question that underwrites a lot that passes as philosophical theology nowadays, and, to the degree that it does not track the progress of science — and in particular, here, of course, physics — it is a nonsense question, and attempts to answer it with a god or gods or some transcendent cause or Aristotelian first mover are bound to end up in a dead-end. Lawrence Krauss has now, for the benefit of us all, provided a more comprehensive, and clearly thought out version, of what he said off-the-cuff in his earlier interview with the Atlantic. In this he has also expressed his apology to those whom he “may have unjustly offended by seemingly blanket statements about the field [viz., philosophy],” and has placed those remarks very carefully in context — and now I find little to disagree with him about. Indeed, it seems to me that he says some very important things that are worthwhile ruminating on for a few moments.
Let’s begin at the end, where he says, trenchantly:
To those who wish to impose their definition of reality abstractly, independent[ly] of emerging empirical knowledge and the changing questions that go with it, and call that either philosophy or theology, I would say this: Please go on talking to each other, and let the rest of us get on with the goal of learning more about nature.
And to this I can only say: Agreed. By and large the attempt to speak abstractly about reality, as though we could spin out a theory of the nature of Being (with a capital “B”) from our own minds, is the proprietary bailiwick of theology, though a pursuit that, in the person of someone like Leibniz, trespassed ever so slightly into the domain of philosophy. It is important, in this connexion, to remember that the ancient Greek “philosophers” were as much empirical scientists as they were armchair ontologists or metaphysicians. Aristotle’s Metaphysics is the book the comes after (“meta”) the Physics, and while it may seem to be an abstract discipline, was, it is fair to say, a conceptual amanuensis to physics and not a freestanding theory of being on its own. Philosophy does not, and cannot, exist independently of science. Even morality or ethics must keep the science of human origins and evolution, as well as discoveries in neuroscience, sociology, political science, and history in mind, if it is to apply with any purpose to real human beings living their lives in the world as we are coming to know it. Perhaps the most cogent moral theory today is Philip Kitcher’s The Ethical Project (which I am slowly making my way through), which provides an evolutionary account of a project which is steadily developing and evolving along with our knowledge of ourselves. Patricia Churchland’s book Braintrust is another work by a philosopher who takes serious account of the discoveries of neuroscience and their impact on morality.
Science, Philosophy and Culture
Some time ago I was taken aback when I heard Richard Dawkins say, without any apparent discomfort, that he had thought philosophy a waste of time until he met Dan Dennett. The trouble is that his approval of Dan Dennett was closely allied to his agreement with him. This, it seems to me, is a deeply troubling trend. While I understand that scholarship tends to be a full contact sport, and that not a little blood is spilt in the prosecuting of it, the condemnation of something that you do not understand, without any attempt to understand it, is, in general, to be deplored. I have sometimes made an exception in the case of theology, defending Dawkins against Terry Eagleton’s criticism that he had not studied Duns Scotus and Aquinas on epistemology, but Eagleton’s warning is not something that should be simply dismissed. Here is what he said:
What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them? Or does he imagine like a bumptious young barrister that you can defeat the opposition while being complacently ignorant of its toughest case?
As it happens, I don’t think anything in Eagleton’s specific suggestions in his review would really have helped Dawkins come to terms with the debate between faith and unfaith. If Eagleton thought there was something worthwhile that would really have challenged Dawkins’ criticisms, then he needed to become much more specific than simply to show off his learning.
But this does not diminish the importance of knowing something of your opponent’s strongest case before crowing too loudly about having consigned him to the dustheap. I am reminded of this by two blog posts that were published today or late yesterday, one by Massimo Pigliucci, the other by Bart Ehrman. Professor Pigliucci dismembers Lawrence Krauss’s dismissal of philosophy in an interview in the Atlantic Monthly, whereas Professor Ehrman takes Richard Carrier to task for his rather over the top dismissal of the former’s book, Did Jesus Exist? The Sophists of ancient Greek, perhaps the first self-help gurus known to history, promised to teach their acolytes how to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. Scholarship, however, is supposed to lead to the truth, and sort out the criteria by which the truth in various fields is established, and — while I have indulged in it myself from time to time — brash dismissals of one’s opponents is not the best way through the maze of question and counter-question that can be put on practically any topic you care to name.
Let’s get specific, shall we?
To wake up to the smell of academic napalm in the morning it not altogether invigorating, whatever might be thought of the real thing. It doesn’t smell like victory. However, ten minutes after I turned on my computer I was mired in buttals and rebuttals about the Jesus of history v the Jesus of myth — never mind the Christ of faith — and claims and counterclaims about who is competent to discuss this issue, and what particular academic qualifications are necessary in order even to speak upon the subject, let alone charge exorbitant fees to listen in on parts of the discussion. Jerry Coyne points out, with some justice, that if Ehrman chose to respond (sort of) to Richard Carrier’s criticism of his book, he should at least have considered some other aspects of his argument than simply the question whether a penis-headed cock statue resided somewhere in the Vatican archives, especially since this was one of the marginal points that Carrier made in his critique. Meanwhile, R. Joseph Hoffmann attacks P.Z. Myers (amongst others) – Hoffmann, with wonted politeness, calling him the ”atheist blogger and full-time loudmouth P Z Myers” — for his blog post “Carrier cold-cocks Ehrman” (which is, it should be noted, a response to Ehrman’s HuffPo piece touting his new book, and not Carrier’s more comprehensive response to the book itself). Much of the to-and-froing about the historical Jesus seems to come down to academic qualifications and whether those engaged in the discussion have written a book, or are tenured academics, or have the requisite expertise, or not, as the case may be, something that seems to take up as much space as the arguments themselves. And while, of course, one expects people to use critical methods in their study of anything at all, if they want to approach more closely to the truth, this is not comprehensively dealt with by listing a person’s academic credentials.
Hobson’s Choice
Theo Hobson, with whose contributions to the Guardian I do not often agree, has a new column this morning entitled: Can Liberal Christians stop banging on about gayness? He’s afraid that liberal Anglicanism is becoming a one pony show, and that liberal Anglicanism is becoming identified as the gay party at prayer (though this is not the way he puts it), thus distracting from so many other things that liberalism should represent. Basically, Hobson thinks that this is just poor communication:
Dwelling on the issue is a bad form of Christian communication. The point of Christian communication, or “proclamation”, is to interest people in Christianity, to make it seem attractive, inviting, serious. Banging on about gayness puts people off.
That at least has the virtue of being clear, a bit like Chris Mooney’s claim that accommodationism is bad form for atheist scientists, or like the old saw that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
However, Hobson doesn’t seem to recognise why this particular agenda is so high on the list for liberal Anglicans. It’s in a sense a moral marker for liberal Christianity. Like racism for earlier Christian radicals, the cause of gay Christians has dominated liberal Christianity now for nearly three decades, if not a bit longer. Why? Because this is the one area about which conservative, evangelical Anglicans, or conservative, high church Anglicans, are not prepared to give a centimetre, let alone an inch.
On the perfection of Jesus’ moral teaching
It is almost universally taken for granted that Jesus’ moral teaching, whatever else we might want to say about him, is exalted, if not perfect. Even Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, suggests as much. As he puts it, making sure that no one should misunderstand what he is saying – giving respect where, in my view, it is not due — and confuse it with his earlier description of the Old Testament god:
Well, there’s no denying that, from a moral point of view, Jesus is a huge improvement over the cruel ogre of the Old Testament. Indeed Jesus, if he existed (or whoever wrote his script if he didn’t) was surely one of the great ethical innovators of history. The Sermon on the Mount is way ahead of its time. His ‘turn the other cheek’ anticipated Gandhi and Martin Luther King by two thousand years. It was not for nothing that I wrote an article called ‘Atheists for Jesus’ (and was later delighted to be presented with a T-shirt bearing the legend). [250]
Some Christians might retort that Jesus did not so much anticipate Gandhi or Martin Luther King, but that these two modern heroes learned from him. However, not to put too fine a point on it, during my years as a priest I kept stumbling over Jesus’ morality, until, in the end, it seemed clear to me that, on the whole, I preferred the Old Testament god. Certainly, there are unlovely features of the Old Testament god, but the best of the Old Testament — or what should more appropriately be called the Jewish scriptures, the Tanach — presents us with a loving and caring god, concerned with justice, and at least dreaming of peace. Jesus, on the other hand, is quite different, and, I believe, morally far less defensible.
I want to take the Sermon on the Mount as the basis of this discussion (Matthew chapters 5-7), since this is what people reflexively refer to when they are thinking of the purity and perfection of Jesus’ moral teaching, but which I think shows, not a perfect man, but someone able to dream up a list of sentimental comforts, and append to them a morality so grotesque in its cruelty and inhumanity that it should be rejected by every thoughtful, caring human being.
See! As I said: Religion is Tyranny
Vatican takes on U.S. nuns over gays and all-male priesthood
Kelly McParland Apr 19, 2012 – 11:50 AM ET
As if it didn’t already have enough problems on its hands, the Vatican has picked a fight with a group you might expect to be among its chief supporters: nuns.
According to the New York Times, Pope Benedict XVI has named a U.S. bishop to lay down the law to “the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying that an investigation found that the group had “serious doctrinal problems.”
The Times reports:
