Salon's Andrew O'Hehir pens a favorable review of a new book by the English Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton, an atheist who doesn't think much of the New Atheism and its top spokesmen. Excerpt:
A few years ago, I read an article by a Roman Catholic theologian who wryly observed that the quality of Western atheism had gone steadily downhill since Nietzsche. Eagleton heartily concurs. He freely admits that what Christian doctrine teaches about the universe and the fate of man may not be true, or even plausible. But as he then puts it, "Critics of the most enduring form of popular culture in human history have a moral obligation to confront that case at its most persuasive, rather than grabbing themselves a victory on the cheap by savaging it as so much garbage and gobbledygook."Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, Eagleton insists, are playing to the high-minded liberal-humanist prejudices of their elite audience and, in the process, are displaying a shocking ignorance of their supposed subject, one that would be deemed unacceptable in almost any other intellectual forum. Would anyone be permitted to write a book about courtly love in the Middle Ages based on several visits to a Renaissance Faire, or a book about Nazism based on episodes of "Hogan's Heroes"?
Yet the argument of "Reason, Faith, and Revolution" goes much further, and is much more complicated, than simply pointing out that St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas would roll their eyes in disbelief at the third-rate challenge to their God posed by the likes of Ditchkins. Like Lewis Carroll's White Queen, Eagleton is striving to believe several impossible things -- or at least remarkably unfashionable things -- before breakfast. He seeks to reclaim the transformative and even revolutionary potential of Christian faith, in the face of both liberal atheism and right-wing fundamentalism. And as perhaps the most prominent academic Marxist still in captivity, he puts his own faith in the possibility that socialism can survive its spectacular 20th-century self-immolation.
It's only a slight simplification to say that in this compact little tome, which runs less than 200 pages and is largely conversational in tone, Eagleton hopes to save Christianity from the Christians and Marxism from the Marxists. Yet the book's easy-breezy, wisecracking character is deceptive; I had to read it through twice before concluding that it's one of the most fascinating, most original and prickliest works of philosophy to emerge from the post-9/11 era.
This I've got to read!
Whenever we get into a gay marriage discussion on this blog, there are two points that always recur, but that I never respond to, because it shows that the person asking the question simply doesn't understand how Christian theology works -- and probably doesn't care to learn:
1. "If Jesus didn't address it explicitly, then it must not be important enough for us to worry about."
2. "How do you justify ignoring [insert obscure Levitical law here], but insist that Paul's prohibition of homosexuality is valid? Huh? Huh?"
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Actually, Franklin, would have a quibble with that. I find that, oddly, with atheism, the problem isn't with reduction of their position, like theists usually claim (you're being too simplistic, to literal, you need to dig deeper), but adding too much to it. Making it MUCH more than it is. Don't worry, you won't hurt our feelings by getting down to a single statement, most of us won't feel trivialised, or dismissed by that, because (and this is a HUGE difference between the two positions), most of us don't consider it a major part of our identity. It is something that, if the society we were in weren't so focused on the other view, we could spend years and never think about, any more than I spend a lot of time thinking about that I don't eat liver, or go into deep philosophical musings about why I don't eat liver, or what 'non-liver eating' means to my identity and life. I certainly do not primarily describe myself as 'non-liver eater' and wouldn't bother with atheist except that I know how important that is to other people, how different it is, and how it could bother people, and don't want to spring it on them suddenly.
Atheists aren't necessarily on the opposite of the spectrum regarding faith. They do not necessarily reject 'embraces those things that cannot be rationalized or cannot be supported objectively'. They don't believe in a God. That's all.
They CAN believe in spirits, demons, an afterlife, Bigfoot, UFO abductions, the power of crystals, astrology, tarot cards and pyschic phenomena, just like theists can be pretty hardnosed materialists about all those things EXCEPT those which relate directly to their own faith, period.
If you want the very best (and most popular, so most people get the reference) example of that reversal of expectations, think 'The X-files'.
Scully, the sceptic? She's a hardnosed scientist. She doesn't believe in ghosts and monsters and usually looks for the most mundane explanation, no matter how weird the circumstances seem. She's also a devout Catholic.
Mulder, the 'I want to believe...'? He is the opposite. He looks for the bizarre and supernatural explanation no matter how mundane the thing looks. 'His neck was slashed', he'd try to figure out what monster or weird cult, or alien attack this would be, rather than assuming a psycho with a switchblade. But when it comes to religion? He's not. Out of all the things he believes in, God isn't one of them.
Guess what, Scully is a theist, Mulder is an atheist. Doesn't matter what Scully doesn't believe in, she believes in God.. hence, a theist. Doesn't matter what else Mulder believes in. If God isn't on the list, he's an atheist.
A good example is also Buddhism. There IS theistic Buddhism, but there is also Buddhism that is non-theistic. (A polite way to wriggle around saying 'atheist'. 'A' as a prefix MEANS 'non', so they are synonymous, but don't tell those who use it that. Makes them feel better..) Doesn't mean those Buddhists don't believe in karma, reincarnation, or nirvana. They just don't believe in a deity. No belief in a deity, you're a 'non-theist'. (Not a person who believes in a God'.)
Simple as that. Boy, do people try to make it so complicated.
Karen, that's a good quibble.
A theist embraces those religious things that cannot be rationalized or cannot be supported objectively. An atheist rejects that.
My return quibble is that my expectation of a person whose conclusion about religion is atheism would also reject most or all of those other things you listed, UFOs and such. The abstract reasoning process is -- in my view, of course -- the same in each case: show me the empirical evidence for it, let me make my own determination, and otherwise back off. (That's a bit strongly worded, I know. My inner curmudgeon is out for a breather.)
BTW and FYI, I am a non-theist pagan. I reject anthropomorphism. :-)
Not really. It is FAR more common in the West, where atheism comes often packaged with strict materialism, but there's tons of Far East non-theist Buddhists who would disagree. They believe in afterlives, they believe in Karma, Nirvana, etc. They just don't believe in Gods.
Thing is, don't confuse 'internet atheists' (and heck, I'm one) with the rank and file, that can run the gamut from those who really DO want to upset their parents, to the 'apathetists' (like my mother), who don't give a flying fig about religion, but still collected four leaf clovers, knocked on wood, and sweated over the number 13, to the Randian or Marxist (talk about the gamut) atheists that come with a fully fledged philosophical AND political system in which it is a component.
It is like 'not eating meat'. Some don't for ethical reasons, some come from cultures where nobody does, and they never even considered it any more than you would think about going to the beach and eating sand, some do so for religious reasons, others for health reasons, some can't because of digestive problems, and some just don't like the taste. All they have in common is what they don't do. They don't have to have in common WHY they don't do it.
Myself, it simply didn't sound believable to me. No big philosophical packaging, I'd say that there's a mindset and personality traits in my case, and I've seen it in others, but there's atheists who aren't like me as well (again, my mother). But don't confuse 'atheist' with 'strict materialist'. Like the 'all grass is green, therefore, anything green is grass' fallacy, just because I can't see how a strict materialist could be anything but an atheist doesn't mean that all atheists are strict materialists.
Heck, I'll even say that mine is a not of evidence, but a lack of faith, for better word, or emotional connection. Whatever it is other people get, feel, experience (however you want to word it) when they pray and do various religious things, I apparently don't.
The best way I can describe it is.. I've prayed (spent 18 years in a mainstream Protestant religion), and honestly, took me until I was about 8 to realize people really thought they were talking to someone. (I thought it was more like the 'Pledge of Allegience'. I mean, you're not really talking to a flag, right?). Once I understood that.. I mean, the mind boggling idea they really, REALLY were supposed to be talking to someone.. I tried to do it that way. I never felt anything more than, to be honest, stupid. Kind of like you would feel if you tried to, say, hold a conversation with some inanimate object. I actually did better with it when I thought it was just a rote recitation of common values, hopes, and wishes.
I didn't try to find evidence that God existed. I never assumed you could. I paid enough attention to my classes to know God wasn't a tangible thing to be mentioned. I TRIED to FEEL like one existed. To feel like I had some kind of awareness of presence, that when I talked, I wasn't just thinking words into the air, and someone was listening and responding (yes, even if it was 'no', though I rarely asked for things.)
Once again, I am not the hard science person, I'm the humanities gal. I was looking for something that I was relating to, and conversing with, not something I could quantify. Heck, I don't understand most people I see walking around, certainly didn't expect to do so with some divine being.
Or in other words, I'm not Spock.
Hope that helps a little.
Coming in way too late to join this discussion, I just want to say, thanks for linking to this Salon piece, Rod. It is excellent, and I do plan to buy Eagleton's book.
I like Karen's comments. People tend to assume that all atheists are scientific-materialist atheists, when in fact that is only one kind of possible atheist. They're pretty dominant in the modern western internet world, which favors the science-minded, but they don't even represent a majority of the atheists in the world.
To get an idea of how complex this can be, I'm what could be described as a non-dual Vedantist with some Buddhist leanings. In Advaita Vedanta, "God" is considered to be the "first illusion" of dualistic existence. However, while ultimately considering God to be an illusion, it is accepted that God, and many kinds of Gods, including astal beings, exist, and play their role in creation, just as we do. So in a sense, I'm an atheist, in that I don't consider God to be real, but I'm also a theist, in that I consider God to be at least as real as anything else. On the other hand, I fully accept science as the arbiter of material reality and factual disputes, even though I consider material reality to be only one level of existence, and the most illusory to boot. On a basic, material level, I'm very sympathetic to scientific atheism, but in any greater sense I consider it highly dubious, even juvenile. So the modern atheistic movement to me seems on the one hand completely reasonable and something I even approve of, and on the other hand, desperately sophomoric and even pathetic.
There's a lot of people whose actual views on these things are at least as complex, and contradictory, as my own. And why not? The idea that people are supposed to be boringly consistent with media labelling is one of the most obnoxiious aspects of public debate these days. I've always loved Nietzsche, and wish some of these guys could comprehend an atheism at least as interesting as his, but they are just not up to the task.
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