Theo Hobson v Julian Baggini
Does it matter whether the majority of religious believers actually think the things atheists claim they do?
- guardian.co.uk, Monday November 3 2008 14.30 GMT
- Article history
I find many of my fellow atheists tone deaf when it comes to religion. They believe, as I do, that there is no such real being as God, no heaven, and no immaterial soul. We also agree that religion is a human construction and that people, not divine intelligence, wrote the world's holy books. But unlike them, I think a great deal of interest and value remains in religion once its falsehoods have been accepted.
However, I also think that many liberal theologians, such as yourself, are too quick to dismiss versions of religion the new atheists critique as simplistic caricatures. In particular, there is now a popular line of thought which says that religion is more about practice than belief: praxis not doxa. Beliefs are either secondary or not to be taken too literally.
If religion is to be intellectually respectable, I agree it must take such a non-realist turn. But in churches, temples and synagogues, most religious people do still hold fairly traditional, literal beliefs. Most Christians think that Christ is the only way to salvation, that he rose from the dead; that we have immortal souls; and that God is somehow in charge of events on earth, willing and able to respond to prayers.
So my challenge is this: religious intellectuals cannot dismiss the new atheist critique as simplistic, because its target usually is too. What you defend is not how religion is, but how you think it should be.
All the best
Julian
Theo to Julian
My irritation, indeed anger, with the "new atheists" is that they reduce a complex, fascinating, and hugely important subject to the level of playground debate. To say that religion is untrue and therefore harmful is utterly crude, like trying to take apart a delicate machine while wearing boxing gloves.
Religion is so complex. You don't attempt a definition, but you do imply that its essence lies in belief in God as a "real being", in heaven, and in an immaterial soul, and in the divine authorship of a body of scripture. Well, Judeo-Christian tradition is ambiguous about heaven and the immaterial soul – the Jews of the Old Testament seem not to have believed in either, and many modern Christians follow suit.
I don't really accept the division you posit between literal and metaphorical belief. Do I think that God is a real being out there, who can be persuaded to act in one's favour? No, I'd say that was a bad way of talking about him. But I often say things that make it look as if I do have such a belief: "Help me God!"; "Deliver us from evil", and so on. In reality a huge proportion of believers inhabit this grey area between "literal" and "metaphorical" belief – in a sense all believers do. Atheists call this muddle and hypocrisy – they want every believer to be two-dimensional, so as to bash them all with a two-dimensional critique.
Theo
Julian to Theo
I agree religion is complex and I didn't imply that "its essence lies in belief in God as a 'real being', in heaven, and in an immaterial soul" and so on. Trying to reduce religion to its essence is a foolish game, played by people on both sides of the debate.
But what I would say is that, as a matter of fact, religion often – probably usually – does indeed involve such things, and it is disingenuous of its more sophisticated advocates to pretend otherwise.
Nor will it do to reject the distinction between literal and metaphorical belief. This is not because the rejection is incoherent: I can fully accept that "a huge proportion of believers inhabit this grey area between 'literal' and 'metaphorical' belief". But this simply glosses over the fact that a great deal of belief is not in this grey area at all. Many people in pews would stoutly object to your attempt to make their belief less definite than they feel it to be.
So I'm afraid I think your reply simply illustrates my point: your more intellectual, nuanced version of religion is welcome, but it simply is not what religion is for most believers. Their kind of faith is, sadly, fully deserving of the simple refutations the new atheists dish out.
Best,
Julian
Theo to Julian
Why does it bother atheists if mainstream believers are "literalists"? It's the cultural and political effect of belief that matters, surely.
Let's take a step back and consider the atheist objection to religious belief. It seems to me that it boils down to this: "It's false, and therefore it's harmful." It's both factually wrong to tell a child that there's a God - and also morally wrong, because spreading falsity is bad, and because this falsity tends to have bad effects.
My response is: let's leave aside the question of the truth or falsity of religious belief, because the rationalist rejection of belief can't be the definitive answer it thinks it is. To say that Rowan Williams has been duped by a big con, and lacks the intellect to see it, is surely mistaken.
And my response is also to say: let's focus on the second part of the atheist objection, the harmfulness. For here there is a really important debate to be had. I agree that religion is tied up in all sorts of dubious practices, from female circumcision to the covert selection practiced by church schools. Critics of religion should be attacking these specifics, and should not stray into the mires of philosophy.
But it seems to me that "atheism" is defined by an overarching belief that something called 'religion' is entirely false and so intrinsically harmful. This hankering for a neat Enlightenment narrative damages the debate.
Agree?
Julian to Theo
The "cultural and political effect of belief" may matter more than its truth or falsity, but it does not follow that truth doesn't matter at all. You want to park the truth question, because the existence of intelligent believers like Rowan Williams shows it can't be settled. But this is precisely why I've been insisting that we distinguish between the sophisticated versions of belief held by theologically liberal intellectuals and the simple-minded beliefs of many of the devout. In the case of the latter, there is indeed an overwhelming rational case, if not 100% proof, that they are wrong, and there is no reason why atheists shouldn't make it.
Whether it is harmful or not is indeed another question, but it is related. It is in a real sense bad that people can be so cognitively impaired by faith that they believe, for instance, that Gospels which evidently were the work of men are actually the word of God.
That does not mean all religious belief is harmful, of course. But although there may be some who peddle the "religion is wrong and therefore intrinsically harmful" line, I don't recognise this as an accurate portrayal of mainstream atheist opinion.
I'm afraid you're attacking the most stupid fringes of atheism, while ignoring the stupid forms of religion which are much more common.
Yours,
Julian
Theo to Julian
I admit that many forms of religious expression are open to the charge of factual wrongness. Most obviously, creationism.
Yes, it's fair enough for atheists to make the case against creationism, but in practice they tend to widen the attack and say religion in general is factually wrong. They often say that liberal believers are "useful idiots", giving respectability to fundamentalism.
You say: "we [must] distinguish between the sophisticated versions of belief held by theologically liberal intellectuals and the simple-minded beliefs of many of the devout." On one level I agree – I don't want to be lumped together with a creationist – nor with a Catholic who venerates saintly bones and sees papal laws as binding. But on another level I don't agree that we can make this clean distinction between sophisticated and simple-minded belief. For all religious belief is open to charges of irrationalism. The core of Christianity is thinking that this man Jesus is uniquely important, on another level from any other human ever, worthy of worship. This belief can't be rationally justified.
So I can't really claim there's a gulf, or even a ditch, between me and the simple-minded devout, because that would imply I believed in a rationally defensible version of religion. That's why I'm so keen to park the truth question, and stick to the harm question.
Julian to Theo
It is important to draw distinctions, even when doing so does not result in sharp dividing lines. Just as it is wrong to think the world is more black and white than it is, so it should not be pretended that it's all the same shade of grey.
My goal is to engage with the lighter shades of religious belief while recognising that a lot of it is much darker. I agree, however, that many leading atheists see it as all black. Just today, for example, I read that Richard Dawkins, advocating atheist adverts on buses, said "This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think – and thinking is anathema to religion." That is evidently wrong.
But just as I disown atheism's disreputable extremes, I'd like people like you to say that although Dawkins et al are wrong to tar all religion with the same brush, they're actually right about what a great many people do and have believed about God and religion. Let's clear out the manifest nonsense on both sides of the fence, so that us self-professed reasonable folks can get on and talk more constructively, as I hope we have been doing.
I want more modern-day Kierkegaards – stout defenders of religion who at the same time denounce the religion of their age as largely bankrupt.
Yours,
Julian
Theo to Julian
What bothers me about Dawkins, and a few others, is that they have made intelligent discussion about religion so much harder. For they have legitimised a polemical approach that wants to dismiss the huge complex tradition known as theology. This is a sort of crime against intelligent discourse.
Of course a lot of theology is closed-minded, the propaganda of this or that church, but there is also a long tradition that genuinely tries to make sense of religion, from a sympathetic-yet-critical perspective. As you know, this tradition blurs with philosophy – Kierkegaard, whom you mention, is an example of the overlap. This tradition used to be a fairly stable part of British intellectual life, but seems to have collapsed in recent decades, maybe because Christian thought took an anti-liberal turn.
We need to revive the idea that religion is worth thinking about – that there is value in a discourse that treats it with 'critical respect'. You seem to acknowledge this – I recall an article you wrote a couple of years ago in which you pondered the religious theme of gratitude, and asked whether it could survive the demise of religious belief. This struck me as admirably open-minded.
We need to restore this intellectual space – discussion of religion that neither asserts a rigid party line nor dismisses the whole thing as childish error. This isn't easy – dogmatists on both sides will sneer at the attempt. But it's possible.
Yours hopefully,
Theo
No comments:
Post a Comment