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The New New Atheism
by Peter Berkowitz, WSJ
Thanks to ranjani for the link.
Reposted from:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB118454735982067207.html
"There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient biblical wisdom.
Of course the famous words of Ecclesiastes should not be taken in a slavishly literal sense, a technique that is all-too-common among those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements.
But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating atheism has become a lucrative business. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism's newest champions have sold close to a million books. Some 500,000 hardcover copies are in print of Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion" (2006); 296,000 copies of Christopher Hitchens's "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (2007); 185,000 copies of Sam Harris's "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2006); 64,100 copies of Daniel C. Dennett's "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon"; and 60,000 copies of Victor J. Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does not Exist" (2007).
Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia. Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of natural science, individual freedom and human equality. Unlike the Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops. And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the human spirit, the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly backward belief in a divine presence in history.
So Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the rest have some fair claim to novelty. But not where it really counts. They contend that from the vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. The disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.
The case for the new new atheism has been restated most recently and most forcefully and wittily in "God Is Not Great" by my friend Mr. Hitchens. It must be said that Mr. Hitchens is simply incapable of uttering or writing a dull sentence. And it should be added that only a very daring or very foolish person would throw down the gauntlet on an issue so close to Mr. Hitchens's heart.
But his arguments do not come close to disproving God's existence or demonstrating that religion is irredeemably evil. Consider Mr. Hitchens's contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and violently. According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and conquest for God's greater glory, and obliges the "true believer" to restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until "the whole world bows the knee."
The bloody history of oppression and war undertaken on behalf of the gods and God, from time immemorial, makes all decent people shudder. But Mr. Hitchens knows perfectly well that human beings are not born in Rousseauian purity and freedom, and then made savage by the imposition of the chains of religion. Therefore, he should have asked whether and to what extent the varieties of religion have inflamed or rather disciplined humanity's powerful built-in propensity, attested to by social science, to fight and kill. But he didn't.
Such a question opens intriguing possibilities. Mr. Hitchens mocks the crudity of the biblical principle known in Latin as lex talionis, or an "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot." But suppose, as Jewish teaching suggests, that the biblical principle put an end to the practice of taking a leg for a foot and a life for an eye, and in its place established a principle that, though differently interpreted today, remains a cornerstone of our notion of justice -- that the punishment should fit the crime.
Similarly, Mr. Hitchens heaps scorn on the biblical story of Abraham's binding of Isaac, in which, at the last moment, an angel stays Abraham's hand. What kind of barbarian, wonders Mr. Hitchens, would prepare to sacrifice his son at God's command, and what kind of morally stunted individuals would honor such a man, or the deity who made the demand? Yet Mr. Hitchens's categorical claim that religion poisons everything is undermined by the common interpretation according to which God's testing of Abraham taught, among other things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice was contrary to God's will, and must be put to an end forever.
At the same time, Mr. Hitchens has next to nothing to say about the historical role of religion, particularly Christianity, particularly in America, in nourishing the soil in which our widely and deeply shared beliefs in liberty, democracy and equality took root and grew strong -- a subject dealt with perceptively by Yale professor of computer science David Gelernter in his recent book "Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion."
Mr. Hitchens anticipates that critics will point to those crimes against humanity, dwarfing religion's sins, committed in the name of secular ideas in the 20th century. He attempts to deflect the challenge with sophistry: "It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists." But who is behaving defensively here? Mr. Hitchens is the one who unequivocally insists that religion poisons everything, and it is Mr. Hitchens who holds out the utopian hope that eradicating it will subdue humanity's evil propensities and resolve its enduring questions.
Nor is his case bolstered by his observation that 20th-century totalitarianism took on many features of religion. That only brings home the need to distinguish, as Mr. Hitchens resolutely refuses to do, between authentic and corrupt, and just and unjust, religious teachings. And it begs the question of why the 20th-century embrace of secularism unleashed human depravity of unprecedented proportions.
Even were he to concede that religion doesn't poison everything, Mr. Hitchens presumably still would cling to his claim that the findings of modern science prove that God does not exist. Thanks to the knowledge we have attained of how the natural order actually operates -- in particular the discoveries of Charles Darwin and modern physics -- he concludes that "all attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule."
This conclusion, however, contradicts that of the late Stephen Jay Gould, to whom Mr. Hitchens himself refers as a "great paleontologist" and whose authority he invokes in support of the proposition that randomness is an essential feature of evolution. Noting surveys that showed that half of all scientists are religious, Gould commented amusingly that "Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism."
These lines are quoted in "The Dawkins Delusion," by Alistair McGrath, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from Oxford, where he is now professor of historical theology, and by his wife Joanna Collicutt McGrath, who studied experimental psychology at Oxford and is currently a lecturer in the psychology of religion at the University of London. According to the McGraths, Gould was correct to think that both conventional religious belief and atheism are compatible with natural science, in part because "there are many questions that by their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method." Such questions -- toward which the mind naturally wanders, though it is susceptible to ambush by the crude scientism of which Mr. Hitchens occasionally avails himself -- include: Where did the universe come from, and is it governed by purpose?
As for his claim that the Bible abounds in falsehood and contradiction, Mr. Hitchens makes great sport with an old straw man. Yes, traditions teach that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, yet the Pentateuch refers to Moses in the third person and tells the story of his death. Yes, Matthew and Luke disagree on the Virgin Birth and the genealogy of Jesus. And so on. The literalness of Mr. Hitchens's readings would put many a fundamentalist to shame.
However, isolating the supposed religious significance of the Bible from the communities and interpretive traditions that have elaborated its teaching is invalid. It is like deriving the meaning of the Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to "The Federalist Papers," which provides authoritative commentary on its principles; without reference to the two centuries of cases and controversies through which the Supreme Court has sought to construe its meaning; and without reference to the two centuries of experience through which the American people have sought to put the institutional framework it outlines into practice.
In making his case that reason must regard faith as an enemy to be wiped out, Mr. Hitchens declares Socrates's teaching that knowledge consists in knowing one's ignorance to be "the definition of an educated person." And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions.
Mr. Hitchens is by far the most erudite and entertaining of the new new atheists. But his errors and his excesses are shared by the whole lot. And these errors and excesses have pernicious political consequences, amplifying invidious distinctions among fellow citizens and obscuring crucial differences among believers world wide.
Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.
Like philosophy, religion, rightly understood, has a beginning in wonder. The most wonderful of creatures are human beings themselves. Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings -- woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes -- are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true. But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women -- a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation -- is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.
Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, teaches at George Mason University School of Law.
Reposted from:
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB118454735982067207.html
"There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient biblical wisdom.
Of course the famous words of Ecclesiastes should not be taken in a slavishly literal sense, a technique that is all-too-common among those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements.
But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating atheism has become a lucrative business. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism's newest champions have sold close to a million books. Some 500,000 hardcover copies are in print of Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion" (2006); 296,000 copies of Christopher Hitchens's "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (2007); 185,000 copies of Sam Harris's "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2006); 64,100 copies of Daniel C. Dennett's "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon"; and 60,000 copies of Victor J. Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does not Exist" (2007).
Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia. Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of natural science, individual freedom and human equality. Unlike the Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops. And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the human spirit, the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly backward belief in a divine presence in history.So Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the rest have some fair claim to novelty. But not where it really counts. They contend that from the vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. The disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.
The case for the new new atheism has been restated most recently and most forcefully and wittily in "God Is Not Great" by my friend Mr. Hitchens. It must be said that Mr. Hitchens is simply incapable of uttering or writing a dull sentence. And it should be added that only a very daring or very foolish person would throw down the gauntlet on an issue so close to Mr. Hitchens's heart.
But his arguments do not come close to disproving God's existence or demonstrating that religion is irredeemably evil. Consider Mr. Hitchens's contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and violently. According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and conquest for God's greater glory, and obliges the "true believer" to restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until "the whole world bows the knee."
The bloody history of oppression and war undertaken on behalf of the gods and God, from time immemorial, makes all decent people shudder. But Mr. Hitchens knows perfectly well that human beings are not born in Rousseauian purity and freedom, and then made savage by the imposition of the chains of religion. Therefore, he should have asked whether and to what extent the varieties of religion have inflamed or rather disciplined humanity's powerful built-in propensity, attested to by social science, to fight and kill. But he didn't.
Such a question opens intriguing possibilities. Mr. Hitchens mocks the crudity of the biblical principle known in Latin as lex talionis, or an "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot." But suppose, as Jewish teaching suggests, that the biblical principle put an end to the practice of taking a leg for a foot and a life for an eye, and in its place established a principle that, though differently interpreted today, remains a cornerstone of our notion of justice -- that the punishment should fit the crime.
Similarly, Mr. Hitchens heaps scorn on the biblical story of Abraham's binding of Isaac, in which, at the last moment, an angel stays Abraham's hand. What kind of barbarian, wonders Mr. Hitchens, would prepare to sacrifice his son at God's command, and what kind of morally stunted individuals would honor such a man, or the deity who made the demand? Yet Mr. Hitchens's categorical claim that religion poisons everything is undermined by the common interpretation according to which God's testing of Abraham taught, among other things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice was contrary to God's will, and must be put to an end forever.
At the same time, Mr. Hitchens has next to nothing to say about the historical role of religion, particularly Christianity, particularly in America, in nourishing the soil in which our widely and deeply shared beliefs in liberty, democracy and equality took root and grew strong -- a subject dealt with perceptively by Yale professor of computer science David Gelernter in his recent book "Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion."
Mr. Hitchens anticipates that critics will point to those crimes against humanity, dwarfing religion's sins, committed in the name of secular ideas in the 20th century. He attempts to deflect the challenge with sophistry: "It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists." But who is behaving defensively here? Mr. Hitchens is the one who unequivocally insists that religion poisons everything, and it is Mr. Hitchens who holds out the utopian hope that eradicating it will subdue humanity's evil propensities and resolve its enduring questions.
Nor is his case bolstered by his observation that 20th-century totalitarianism took on many features of religion. That only brings home the need to distinguish, as Mr. Hitchens resolutely refuses to do, between authentic and corrupt, and just and unjust, religious teachings. And it begs the question of why the 20th-century embrace of secularism unleashed human depravity of unprecedented proportions.
Even were he to concede that religion doesn't poison everything, Mr. Hitchens presumably still would cling to his claim that the findings of modern science prove that God does not exist. Thanks to the knowledge we have attained of how the natural order actually operates -- in particular the discoveries of Charles Darwin and modern physics -- he concludes that "all attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule."
This conclusion, however, contradicts that of the late Stephen Jay Gould, to whom Mr. Hitchens himself refers as a "great paleontologist" and whose authority he invokes in support of the proposition that randomness is an essential feature of evolution. Noting surveys that showed that half of all scientists are religious, Gould commented amusingly that "Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism."
These lines are quoted in "The Dawkins Delusion," by Alistair McGrath, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from Oxford, where he is now professor of historical theology, and by his wife Joanna Collicutt McGrath, who studied experimental psychology at Oxford and is currently a lecturer in the psychology of religion at the University of London. According to the McGraths, Gould was correct to think that both conventional religious belief and atheism are compatible with natural science, in part because "there are many questions that by their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method." Such questions -- toward which the mind naturally wanders, though it is susceptible to ambush by the crude scientism of which Mr. Hitchens occasionally avails himself -- include: Where did the universe come from, and is it governed by purpose?
As for his claim that the Bible abounds in falsehood and contradiction, Mr. Hitchens makes great sport with an old straw man. Yes, traditions teach that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, yet the Pentateuch refers to Moses in the third person and tells the story of his death. Yes, Matthew and Luke disagree on the Virgin Birth and the genealogy of Jesus. And so on. The literalness of Mr. Hitchens's readings would put many a fundamentalist to shame.
However, isolating the supposed religious significance of the Bible from the communities and interpretive traditions that have elaborated its teaching is invalid. It is like deriving the meaning of the Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to "The Federalist Papers," which provides authoritative commentary on its principles; without reference to the two centuries of cases and controversies through which the Supreme Court has sought to construe its meaning; and without reference to the two centuries of experience through which the American people have sought to put the institutional framework it outlines into practice.
In making his case that reason must regard faith as an enemy to be wiped out, Mr. Hitchens declares Socrates's teaching that knowledge consists in knowing one's ignorance to be "the definition of an educated person." And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions.
Mr. Hitchens is by far the most erudite and entertaining of the new new atheists. But his errors and his excesses are shared by the whole lot. And these errors and excesses have pernicious political consequences, amplifying invidious distinctions among fellow citizens and obscuring crucial differences among believers world wide.
Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.
Like philosophy, religion, rightly understood, has a beginning in wonder. The most wonderful of creatures are human beings themselves. Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings -- woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes -- are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true. But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women -- a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation -- is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.
Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, teaches at George Mason University School of Law.
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Posted: Monday, July 16, 2007 | PermalinkComments 1 - 50 of 68 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #56567 by _J_ on July 16, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Is that picture supposed to be Hitchens debating with God?Wonder why they didn't take a photograph.
Other Comments by _J_
3. Comment #56568 by DV82XL on July 16, 2007 at 12:44 pm
One doubts that he has any conviction in these matters.I am seeing this more and more among those apologists of faith that are members of the intelligentsia. They are victims of their own mind's inability to ignore commonsense.
Their hearts are not in it anymore.
Other Comments by DV82XL
4. Comment #56570 by crazy4blues on July 16, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Typical Hoover Inst. tripe. Condi Rice, anyone? We see how well that kind of thinking is working out! Other Comments by crazy4blues
5. Comment #56577 by TinyRobot on July 16, 2007 at 1:05 pm
There are, of course, many things wrong with this article but just a couple of quick points:1. There is a rather pathetic appeal to authority (since he's religious then we shouldn't be surprised) on at least two occasions - referring to McGrath's doctorate and Gould as a 'great paleontologist'. I think i heard James Randi give a good response to this type of argument once. It went something along the lines of 'just because Einstein was a great physicist/mathematician doesn't mean he knew how to make good toast'. Likewise with McGrath and Gould. Actually Randi has some good comments on PhDs too. Then again Dawkins (or maybe somebody else i'm not too sure) has said that Darwinism didn't make atheism inevitable, merely possible. Even if Darwinism is compatible with some form of religious belief, it certainly makes biblical literalism less respectable.
Which leads me to...
2. Berkowitz also comments that Hitchens is criticising a straw man with his biblical literalism. I'd hardly call the flesh and blood Creationist movement straw men (or indeed women although women should distance themselves from the association). Of course, i agree that it shouldn't be interpreted literally (nor should a constitution - actually i am a [PhD!!!!!!!] law student and i have some nuanced views on this whole area) but to simply assert that Hitchens is criticising a straw man demonstrates a peculiar attitude towards empirical reality.
3. The claim that religion had something to do with the principles of liberty and equality etc is extremely questionable (a case of special pleading methinks). AC Graylings 'What is Good?' deals with this pretty well and suggests the complete opposite to this article i.e. that most moral progress occurs in spite of religion and not because of. The notion of the Great Chain of Being (with its expressions in Western and Eastern cultures) is at its heart a religious idea and is certainly not on all fours with equality. Also liberty is hardly valued in religion, look at Muslim societies today, Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and certain parts of America today - there is hardly a commitment to the great ideals of liberty such as free speech, tolerance etc. Of course, many religious people can accommodate their beliefs within these SECULAR ideals, but that is all they are doing 'accommodating'.
4. Finally, on the whole Stalinism issue, Hitchens gave a pretty reasonable reply to this recently in an interview on Point of Inquiry. He said that atheism was a necessary but not sufficient condition for enlightenment - i.e. you can be an atheist and still believe all sorts of crazy things...like Gould and his Marxism perhaps.
Other Comments by TinyRobot
6. Comment #56582 by robert s on July 16, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Is it just me, or is SJG taking a bigger part in these debates some years after his death than he did when he was alive?Other Comments by robert s
7. Comment #56583 by hasty toweling on July 16, 2007 at 1:25 pm
The author gives not one reason why a particular religion is true. This is an absolutely universal feature of articles like this. Writers like Berkowitz never notice.Other Comments by hasty toweling
8. Comment #56603 by Nails on July 16, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Remind yourselves people, what is the greatest selling book on the planet bar none?And where has all the money from that gone?
Money cannot be the sole reason for selling books, but it is a damn good and universal one.
Other Comments by Nails
9. Comment #56605 by PaulJ on July 16, 2007 at 2:14 pm
But suppose, as Jewish teaching suggests, that the biblical principle put an end to the practice of taking a leg for a foot and a life for an eye, and in its place established a principle that, though differently interpreted today, remains a cornerstone of our notion of justice -- that the punishment should fit the crime.Such as stoning and other forms of capital punishment for misdemeanours?
..."there are many questions that by their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method." Such questions -- toward which the mind naturally wanders, though it is susceptible to ambush by the crude scientism of which Mr. Hitchens occasionally avails himself -- include: Where did the universe come from, and is it governed by purpose?The first example is very much a scientific question (even if science can't at present answer it). The second is a nonsense question - the universe is no more "governed by purpose" than a die is "trying" to come up a six when you throw it.
It is like deriving the meaning of the Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to "The Federalist Papers," which provides authoritative commentary on its principles...The problem here is the "authoritative commentary" - by what authority is biblical commentary valid?
And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors all his observations and determines his conclusions.So Hitchens' atheism is a "rigidly dogmatic premise"? How many more times? - atheism by definition cannot be dogmatic (or fundamentalist, for that matter).
That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true. But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women -- a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation -- is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.More proof that this writer hasn't read (or hasn't understood) what Hitchens has been saying. We don't get "moral foundations" from scripture.
Other Comments by PaulJ
10. Comment #56608 by Goldy on July 16, 2007 at 2:20 pm
NailsOK, I give up - the greatest selling book on the planet - Harry Potter?
If you mean the bible then I guess congregations giving money to church leaders (I live in NZ where names of those in the church and their contributions are read out in church encourage giving, irrespective of the contributers ability to pay. I also believe 10% of the pay packet is expected) who then use that money to buy bibles to sprinkle everywhere (why do the Gideons insist on it?).
Anyway, i have read it - it is not damn good - it is inconsistent and at times very confusing. I do like Ezekiel, mind - best read when a touch high :-) When I heard it in chapels at school and during religious education, all I could get in my head were questions. Indeed, the bible was implicated in my athiesm - answers to my questions convinced me there was no god.
Other Comments by Goldy
11. Comment #56611 by Steven Mading on July 16, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Why do the same people who insist we are wrong to criticise the bible with a literal reading of it still think it's right to believe that jesus literally rose form the dead and was literally the son of a literal god? The answer is, of course, that they take it literally wherever it would be helpful to the propigation of the religion to do so, and they take it figuratively wherever it would be harmful to the propigation of the religion to take it literally. They do what is necessary to keep it going and work backward from that goal to decide which parts to take literally and which parts to dump. Those that don't do this don't propigate their ideas. Those that do do this get to pass their ideas on. The just-a-metaphor dodge is an evolved response to help the religion survive in the face of criticism.Other Comments by Steven Mading
12. Comment #56615 by jaytee_555 on July 16, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Oh Dear! What a mess. Berkowitz says;"....by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens..."
Not true. The writers who Berkowitz criticises all recognise and make distinctions between the 'moderate' and 'fundamentalist' adherents of faith, and Dawkins in particular, goes to considerable lengths to explain why the former, though less dangerous, give support and cover to the latter.
"Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia".
But surely, today's fashionable disbelief is not remotely as profitable as religion, and the purchase of a book is not compulsory.
Berkovitz accuses Dawkins of contending that
"...we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist...."
Again simply untrue. Dawkins has never said that, and allows the possibility (albeit a remote one) that God exists.
"...God's testing of Abraham taught, among other things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice was contrary to God's will..."
This is NOT the common interpretation of this story. The main point is Abraham's faithfulness, and God rewards him for it. There is nothing to indicate that it is a lesson against child-sacrifice. In fact, it is a celebration of mental sadism and child abuse in praise of irrational belief. Incidentally, if killing innocent children is against God's will, why did God command women and children to be slain after battles (but virgins spared)? Etc, etc etc.
He admits that the principle of 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth' is differently interpreted today, but completely misses the obvious point that it is differently interpreted precisely because humanity is more moral than religion.
And if 'the punishment fitting the crime' is basically a biblical concept, does this justify (as most Christians teach) that the eternal punishment of athesists with physical and mental torture in Hell for being unable to believe, is justified?
Berkowitz could be right about one thing, though! He quotes Ecclesiastes,
"There is nothing new under the sun"
If this comedian was up to date with the current debate and had something original and useful to say, he'd not be dishing up the same old same, old stuff that has been rebutted a million times. For a lawyer, he makes a very unconvincing argument.
Other Comments by jaytee_555
13. Comment #56622 by Dr Benway on July 16, 2007 at 3:28 pm
...those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements.The self-contradictory statements proves the Bible false. That deserves a pause.
What baby are we in danger of tossing if we chuck the bathwater of religion? Can't we have nice buildings, rituals, art, community, charity, celebration, and all without the woowoo?
Other Comments by Dr Benway
14. Comment #56626 by the great teapot on July 16, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I wish this fashion for Atheism would end so we can all go back to believing in things without a shred of evidence.Atheism seemed fun at first but now I can see a great void in my life approaching that not believing in things without reason simply can no longer fill.
What is the next fashion, can anyone advice me,I don't want to appear out of touch.
Other Comments by the great teapot
15. Comment #56633 by _J_ on July 16, 2007 at 4:43 pm
More pressingly: what's brought on Dr Benway's cheeky pose again? Other Comments by _J_
16. Comment #56637 by wardsie on July 16, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Just how many holes would Mr. Berkowitz like me to start poking into his article?'Consider Mr. Hitchens's contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and violently. According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and conquest for God's greater glory, and obliges the "true believer" to restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until "the whole world bows the knee."'
Christopher Hitchens does no such thing in his book.
'Yet Mr. Hitchens's categorical claim that religion poisons everything is undermined by the common interpretation according to which God's testing of Abraham taught, among other things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice was contrary to God's will, and must be put to an end forever.'
Having just re-read Genesis. I can find no way that Abraham was teaching anything of the sort.
'At the same time, Mr. Hitchens has next to nothing to say about the historical role of religion, particularly Christianity, particularly in America, in nourishing the soil in which our widely and deeply shared beliefs in liberty, democracy and equality took root and grew strong'
Liberty like slavery? Liberty like marginalising the native peoples?
Perhaps Mr. Berkowitz is unaware that democracy has also taken root in many other countries. Including my own former colony.
'And it begs the question of why the 20th-century embrace of secularism unleashed human depravity of unprecedented proportions.'
So it was secularism which unleashed human depravity?
Crusades?
Inquisition?
Child abuse?
'The literalness of Mr. Hitchens's readings would put many a fundamentalist to shame.'
One wonders why anyone would bother to read the Bible at all if so much of it is not to be taken literally. I take heart, as a secularist, that there is ever growing apology for the unpleasant bits. Of which there are many.
Other Comments by wardsie
17. Comment #56645 by Satanburiedfossils on July 16, 2007 at 6:34 pm
...the common interpretation according to which God's testing of Abraham taught, among other things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice was contrary to God's will, and must be put to an end forever.God seems to have no qualms about sacrificing children in Judges (emphasis added):
Judges 11:30-32 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands.
Judges 11:34-35 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.
Judges 11:38-40 And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.
Jephthah enlists God's aid (as if the Almighty's arm needed twisting when it comes to killing) by making a foolish vow -- notwithstanding that whoever should haplessly enter Jephthah's home would most certainly be an innocent person!
The "very great slaughter" of the Ammonites in Judges 11:33 failing to abate God's seemingly insatiable appetite for bloodletting (no surprise here), Jephthah, a parent placed in the wickedly ironic, if not horrifying, position of having to incinerate his own child, must now commit one final act of senseless murder. Unlike Abraham's son, however, Jephthah's daughter is to receive no clemency from on high (except for a two-month reprieve to be spent agonizing over her fate -- just God's way of heaping insult on injury). But then, if the devil expects to be paid his due, then surely God will not be shown to be lax in letting his own accounts suffer. And even better for the bloodthirsty sky-god of the Old Testament, the sacrifice just happens to be a virgin! Who says God works in mysterious ways?
Other Comments by Satanburiedfossils
18. Comment #56647 by Lil_Xunzian on July 16, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I like the way Berkowitz conflates the Bible with texts in general. Okay, well, what Hitchens is doing would be invalid except for one thing. The Bible, the Koran, etc. all purport to be the word of God, who is infallible, while the majority of texts (like the Constitution) are admittedly the word of man, who is fallible. Can you imagine someone saying that the Constitution is the word of God? Saying that the Bible is the word of God puts it in a different category than our usual texts. Thus, when Berkowitz accuses Hitchens of making an invalid argument, he is making a category mistake. Now, I don't believe that the Bible is the word of God, but as long as you believe that, you can't treat word-of-God-texts the same way you would word-of-man-texts. It's a blatant category error to want to treat texts written by admittedly fallible beings the same way as texts authored by an allegedly infallible being. TWO WORDS: CATEGORY ERROR.P.S. By "man" I of course mean men, women, and other humans.
Other Comments by Lil_Xunzian
19. Comment #56650 by Lil_Xunzian on July 16, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Here on the backlash corner someone should also post that ridiculous, pathetic skit that was on Faux's Half Hour News Hour (idiots), mocking books advocating atheism by having God murder all of the authors.Other Comments by Lil_Xunzian
20. Comment #56686 by bouwe on July 17, 2007 at 12:12 am
19. Comment #56650 by Lil_Xunzian (above)This sounds appalling. I haven't heard of it. Could you give us a few more details?
Other Comments by bouwe
21. Comment #56698 by hungarianelephant on July 17, 2007 at 1:25 am
the new new atheism loudly proclaims its hatred of God
Hands up everyone here who hates a non-existent being. Anyone?
Didn't think so.
______________________________
Teapot comment 14 - that is the funniest thing I have read this week. I salute you.
Other Comments by hungarianelephant
22. Comment #56705 by BT Murtagh on July 17, 2007 at 1:46 am
Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility
It would appear that in addition to not reading Hitchens, the author hasn't read Epicurus or Lucretius, neither of whom did any such thing.
Other Comments by BT Murtagh
23. Comment #56713 by pewkatchoo on July 17, 2007 at 2:47 am
Every single one of Berkowitz's arguments fall apart if one presumes that there is no god. If one cannot bring oneself to believe in god then there is no point to religion at all. I might as well believe in Arthur C Clarkes 'Childhood's End' as believe in any of the religious twaddle. Other Comments by pewkatchoo
24. Comment #56722 by Philip1978 on July 17, 2007 at 3:55 am
I really love the way he says Hitchens et all are fantastically intelligent yet its McGrath who is the really clever and intelligent one cos he uses GOD!I agree with J (So the play is finished then young man, is it, hmmm?!!) the more pressing issue is Dr Benway's return to mooning!
Philip
Other Comments by Philip1978
25. Comment #56724 by Logicel on July 17, 2007 at 4:01 am
I agree, Philip, Tuffy, the glorious tufted titmouse, with its accurate poop-a-meter, keeps this site intellectually honest. Other Comments by Logicel
26. Comment #56727 by Logicel on July 17, 2007 at 4:15 am
Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia.______
There is the implication here that the recent best-selling atheist authors KNEW--apparently through some atheistic revelation--that books on atheism would sell like hotcakes. However, Dawkins has frequently expressed his surprise at encountering the choir to whom he is directing his 'lucrative' product, as being much bigger and enthusiastic than he had thought.
Also, the market knows best: these writers are filling a demand.
Other Comments by Logicel
27. Comment #56729 by aparlak on July 17, 2007 at 4:16 am
The part of the article that is really interesting to me is the issue of Abraham and sacrifice of Isaac.The writer says that sacrifice of children at Abraham's time was widespread and that this story actually serves to stop this practice!
This brings about a million questions and conclusions:
1. God actually never asked for the sacrifice of children in history. *** Really!
2. People that did sacrifice their children before Abraham were deluded and God didn't actually demand this. *** Really!
3. Abraham was also deluded when he thought that he was called by God to sacrifice Isaac, or, God did actually call him, but this was part of the plan to keep humanity from sacrificing children. *** Really! Are you sure?
4. Were people simply dreaming? Were they mentally ill? If yes how can you be sure that anybody is actually hearing from God? If not, was Satan the deceiver? If yes, how come there is no talk whatsoever of Satan in those passages of the Old Testament? Moreover how do you know that the one that asked for the sacrifice of Isaac is Satan, and the one that prevented it is God and not vice versa?
5. If it is OK for someone to attempt sacrifice of his/her child according to God's request. How can you blame people that genuinely believe for sacrificing their children?
I can write hundreds items more, but I'm bored.
Other Comments by aparlak
28. Comment #56730 by Quetzalcoatl on July 17, 2007 at 4:18 am
"There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient biblical wisdom.
But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating atheism has become a lucrative business
Massive contradiction right there.
I find it quite amusing that, when confronted by contradictions in the Bible, theists insist that it's OUR fault for reading the Bible too literally. Even more laughable, that we aren't supposed to take literally the writings of two of the four accounts of Jesus' life!
He states that atheists have not disproved the existence of God. Why should we? It is for those who assert God to prove his reality. In legal terms, the burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defence. I "believe" (loaded word, there) that atheists have raised more than enough points to prove reasonable doubt. What evidence has the theistic prosecution given us?
Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America.
Oh really? Try being gay and/or atheist in many parts of America. See what "equality" you get then!
I reckon Dr Benway changes his pose so regularly because he likes us to discuss it. Do not fall into the trap of revering the poop-o-meter!
Other Comments by Quetzalcoatl
29. Comment #56735 by the_assayer on July 17, 2007 at 4:24 am
I think most religions fail to notice that atheism is not a competant faith. The new atheism movement is about bringing sense to the world, questioning the credibility of religious stories. We need to do so because religion is trying to depict the scientific enterprise as bogus and filled with liars. Who would have thought that evidence based outlook towards life would need defending? It is quite sad that the religious try to discredit the movement by calling it "money minded" and "dogmatic", all the while proudly presenting themselves as humble servants of a dogma(religion).But I think we should try understanding the deep psychological motives that drive the religious to hold such baseless beliefs with conviction. I think it might have to do with certain underlying concerns like- death, the need sometimes to hope that the impossible be possible or the thought that in a Godless world there would be no justice.
Other Comments by the_assayer
30. Comment #56736 by Logicel on July 17, 2007 at 4:41 am
the new new atheism_____
The intellectually dishonest view of this author could be termed, the old old faith. The just plain old faith flourished because science was either absent or in its infancy, while the old old faith, so proudly embraced by this author, is characterized by its lethargic milling of the same old non-evidential/faith-based god-stuff despite the fact science is the reason why the standard of living for many is as excellent as it is.
Science has proven itself for our well being, while religion has not, certainly not in the time-tested, results-oriented, scientific and factual way. Scientific theories have pronounced explanatory and predicting power, religion has none, just the blunt and dull edge of a defunct knife unable to cut the rational mustard, that humanity and the universe was designed by God for humans.
This guy's approach is beyond old; it is null and void.
Other Comments by Logicel
31. Comment #56784 by GoatBoy36 on July 17, 2007 at 7:53 am
Satanburiedfossils,Excellent point my man! Also: note how God punished David by murdering his child (2 Samuel 12).
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Samuel%2012;&version=31;
gb.
Other Comments by GoatBoy36
32. Comment #56789 by Lil_Xunzian on July 17, 2007 at 8:20 am
bouwe,Fox (because it's fake news) has these comedy shows, like Hannity's America, and one of them is The Half Hour News Hour. It's basically a conservative ripoff of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, except it's neither clever nor funny. Anyway, I caught the second half of the last one, and at first it was just trite, dismissing End of Faith, God Delusion, and god is not Great as nothing but the result of faddish atheism. This, of course, to assure Christendom that it's safe from the big bad secularist. In any event, they moved on from that to a sketch that featured three authors, their books being "The God Scam," "I Hate God!" and another one that I can't remember. So, in the course of the interviews, one author dies from either a heart attack or a stroke (it's unclear) and another suffers from a fatal blow to the head from falling debris, while the remaining one converts to Christianity to save his life.
Other Comments by Lil_Xunzian
33. Comment #56790 by Elli on July 17, 2007 at 8:30 am
"the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice"Evidence please. What outlandish bare-faced lying by Mr. Berkowitz... unless he is privy to evidence of widespread child sacrifice occurring in the period around 2000 years BCE... which I would be fascinated to read. This reminds me of one of Hitchen's points (I just finished his book) where he observes the absurd proposition that humanity thought it perfectly fine to murder and steal until the jews hit Mt Sinai.
However, isolating the supposed religious significance of the Bible from the communities and interpretive traditions that have elaborated its teaching is invalid. It is like deriving the meaning of the Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to "The Federalist Papers," which provides authoritative commentary on its principles; without reference to the two centuries of cases and controversies through which the Supreme Court has sought to construe its meaning; and without reference to the two centuries of experience through which the American people have sought to put the institutional framework it outlines into practice.
Interesting... is he trying to argue the bible was written by a committee of men?
Other Comments by Elli
34. Comment #56856 by LeeLeeOne on July 17, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Yep, another author who is "blinded by the light" of belief in a higher power and the institutions that go along with this farce (ooh, really bad song here), taken to the press. Where are the arguments FOR such a belief? This author is no scholar, as a scholar would only need to actually comprehend the texts and the authors he criticizes. D'oh (homer simpson's word) Other Comments by LeeLeeOne
35. Comment #56913 by IQHQ on July 17, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Great article. I particularly liked the concluding sentence:"And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world"
We would all do well to remember this. It is interesting how defensive some of the contributors on this website become when they are charged with being "as dogmatic as the religious". The Oxford Dictionary defines "dogmatic" as:
"Inclined to assert principles or opinions as incontrovertibly true"
I do not think that there is any doubt that many of our fellow atheists are inclined in such a way about opinions such as "There is no God". We would do well not to get too chuffed at ourselves for having arrived at an atheistic standpoint. The arguments by which we have done so are facile, and not beyond the comprehension of a child. Hitchens continually admits as much. Therefore, it is rude and arrogant for us to speak condescendingly to our religious friends, with the ridiculous assumption that "they must never have thought about it". Maybe this is true for some nutjob fanatics, but it is not so for the vast majority of believers.
Other Comments by IQHQ
36. Comment #56933 by mattcable on July 17, 2007 at 10:25 pm
I think its interesting that every argument anyone makes against the methods of atheist proselytizers gets a swift vicious response on the boards here. I'm not saying Berkowitz is correct, but it does not reflect well on anyone who tars the man as an imbecile as a knee jerk reaction. It raises the specter of the pissed off atheist dick, which frankly is more responsible for the unpopularity of atheism in America than anything else. You can't win hearts and minds when you call everyone who disagrees with you retarded.Other Comments by mattcable
37. Comment #56935 by Bonzai on July 17, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Hitchens's categorical claim that religion poisons everything is undermined by the common interpretation according to which God's testing of Abraham taught
I wonder what "the test" sought to establish.
By any sane moral standard Abraham should have failed the test for going along with God's wicked plan. In Greek mythology Zeus turned a King who sacrificed his son to the gods into a wolf as a punishment, but Abraham got rewarded for the same deed. The fact that "God" in the end stopped the sacrifice isn't the point, the point is that Abraham was ready to slaughter his son just because "God" told him to and he was rewarded for his obedience and willingness to suspend his conscience. What is the moral message of the story? What would happen had Abraham disobeyed?
Other Comments by Bonzai
38. Comment #57010 by buhbriantwo on July 18, 2007 at 6:31 am
> The New New Atheism> By PETER BERKOWITZ
>
> "There is nothing new under the sun," proclaims the Book of
> Ecclesiastes. The rise of the new new atheism confirms this ancient
> biblical wisdom.
++ Why not, then, does this phrase not apply to the millennia of mindless religious group-think? Atheism has been the quiet, distant dark horse on the horizon for dozens of centuries, and is much less appropriate for this quote-stamp than is Christianity itself. In the first sentence of the piece, this author has made clear his attempts to reverse anti-religious arguments and place them, unfittingly, on his ideology's adversaries. "An eye for an eye" might be more appropriate for an opening bible verse.
>
> Of course the famous words of Ecclesiastes should not be taken in a
> slavishly literal sense, a technique that is all-too-common among
> those who think they can refute belief in God by showing that the
> Bible abounds in demonstrably false and self-contradictory statements.
>
++ If one refuses to adhere "slavishly literally" to the Bible, then why take such writings seriously at all? Either you are reading divinely-inspired text, or you are not. If it is an unknown, mixed bag of human rants and divine guidance, then one must cast all credibility of the Bible out the window, as they would be indistinguishable without a separate, divinely-composed guidebook.
> But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating
> atheism has become a lucrative business.
++ Free market supply and demand. A decent portion of the estimated 30 million nonbelievers in this country do actually purchase and read books - go figure. Such deliverance on desired topics have been long-sought and are vastly overdue.
> According to a recent article
> in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism's newest
> champions have sold close to a million books. Some 500,000 hardcover
> copies are in print of Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion" (2006);
> 296,000 copies of Christopher Hitchens's "God Is Not Great: How
> Religion Poisons Everything" (2007); 185,000 copies of Sam Harris's
> "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2006); 64,100 copies of Daniel C.
> Dennett's "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon";
> and
> 60,000 copies of Victor J. Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis:
> How
> Science Shows that God Does not Exist" (2007).
> [The New New Atheism]
++ What about the book that single-handedly started this avalanche of critical analysis of religion: Sam Harris' "The End of Faith" sold over 250,000 copies, and continues to climb. That puts the number very well over 1 million.
>
> Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's
> fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen
> over the millennia.
++ Yes, atheism is so fashionable that 9 out of 10 Americans would never consider (or admit to) such a hip trend of thought as to question religion. I guess when you've been asleep at the helm of habitual religiosity for several centuries straight, that small bleep on the radar will sure wake you up. But it's still just a small bleep, at least for now. It's all relative - kind of like 'The Princess and the Pea' from our childhood fairy tales.
> Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and
> Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure
> and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of
> natural science, individual freedom and human equality.
++ !GASP! How awful!! Science? Individual freedom?? Human equality??!! No wonder we must write such articles like this, attempting to defame and discredit them!
> Unlike the
> Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still
> predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some
> effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism
> proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly
> from the rooftops.
++ I'm curious -- How does one accomplish the hating of a void? If there's no god to hate, then why spend time on it? I've been trying to figure out how to hate that purple tree that does jumping jacks in my bathroom each morning, but I just can't muster up my sense of anti-denial enough to do so. This unenlightened author is obviously seeing criticism of religious belief and activity and assuming it is misplaced hatred for his precious imaginary deity. How naive.
> And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and
> Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the
> human spirit,
++ ummm.... WHAT? This guy obviously read zero Nietzsche or Heidegger. He probably had his seminary interpret and summarize what the two said. What an outlandish claim. Nietzsche argued for empowerment through the death of *the idea of* god, not as a catastrophe.
> the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in
> the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse
> and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly
> backward belief in a divine presence in history.
++ Well, that was worded a bit strongly, but he may be onto something there. :)
>
> So Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the rest have some fair claim
> to novelty. But not where it really counts.
++ What could count more than the ideals of "science, individual freedom, and human equality??" Yeah, those ideas don't count for jack diddley squat.
> They contend that from the
> vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of
> mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with
> finality and certainty, that God
++ [insert] ",or any other supernatural force, almost certainly" [end insert]
> does not exist and organized religion
> is a fraud.
++ Yes, I would agree with that. The majority of organized religion is most definitely a fraud, as the leaders of such institutions are themselves often without much faith, though pretending to have such faith does fare well for their pocketbook.
> The disproportion between the bluster and
> bravado of their
> rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.
++ Wouldn't right HERE be the appropriate place to actually DISCUSS the perceived "limitations of their major arguments"? I guess not. That sure was a empty blustery and braisen statement itself. More unintentional irony.
>
> The case for the new new atheism
++ Why does he keep saying "new new atheism" instead of just "new atheism", or even just "modern atheism"... is he trying to put out the impression that a "new atheism" has been done before, or that any timelessly potent arguments have some sort of vogue, contemporary importance or attachment to society? Great arguments never expire. He seems to be attempting to place atheism into a "phase" or "trend" modus, thus rendering it limited in its threat and importance. Bullocks. Religious folk have still never offered a lucid reply to Russell's teapot, and probably never will. How dare this author smear common sense as being some resurgent phase of pop culture. It is the only idea that was here before religion barged in and corrupted human thought.
> has been restated most recently and
> most forcefully and wittily in "God Is Not Great" by my friend Mr.
> Hitchens. It must be said that Mr. Hitchens is simply incapable of
> uttering or writing a dull sentence. And it should be added that only
> a very daring or very foolish person would throw down the gauntlet on
> an issue so close to Mr. Hitchens's heart.
++ I would whole-heartedly endorse these sentiments. See? I don't always try to disagree. :)
>
> But his arguments do not come close to disproving God's existence or
> demonstrating that religion is irredeemably evil. Consider Mr.
> Hitchens's contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that
> religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and
> violently.
++ He actually never said this. He said that it "can" compel people to do so. The author is trying to warp Hitchens' words so that people can balk at the book, sight unseen, instead of actually reading it and being persuaded by it.
> According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to
> hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and
> conquest for God's greater glory, and obliges the "true believer" to
> restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until "the
> whole world bows the knee."
>
++ Again, the author omitted the word "can." Hitchens isn't so stupid to say that all religion causes all people to behave such and such a manner. But you would sure guess so, reading that sentence. Garbage smearing again.
> The bloody history of oppression and war undertaken on behalf of the
> gods and God, from time immemorial, makes all decent people shudder.
++ All people, apparently except this author, whose main argument is that religion's good deeds outweigh its bad deeds, thus rendering the bloodspill as being 'worth it.' Personally, I'd rather have millions of people eating insects and getting wet in the rain than have millions of people massacred, sentenced to death, or tortured (including by refusal of condoms or proper education to AIDS-crippled Africans by most all stripes of aid-giving faith organizations) by religion over the years. Why are lives in the present always more important than lives in the past, when the religion is more or less the same? Combing one child's hair today doesn't free you of the net immorality of torturing a child yesterday. Nor does either circumstance have the slightest bit of bearing on the validity of your god actually existing. If anything, those MORE religious and MORE faithful have been the ones doing MORE of the killing and MORE of the torture. Faith for goodwill is a terrible argument to try and make.
> But Mr. Hitchens knows perfectly well that human beings are not born
> in Rousseauian purity and freedom, and then made savage by the
> imposition of the chains of religion.
++ Nor did he claim such. But anyone who hasn't read the book surely would've guessed so by that sentence. More misinformation, worded greasily.
> Therefore, he should have asked
> whether and to what extent the varieties of religion have inflamed or
> rather disciplined humanity's powerful built-in propensity, attested
> to by social science, to fight and kill. But he didn't.
++ Actually, he did. Hitchens details the Stanford Prison Experiment and Rwandan child soldiers, and how people have the instinct to fight and kill, as a byproduct of hunting and territorial defense by our evolutionary ancestors. His argument is fortified by reasoning, convincingly with much historical detail, how religion creates in-groups and out-groups, and by and large teaches people to distrust, hate, attempt religious conversion of, or even seek the death of, those who disagree with them. Why? Could you think of any better reason to do something irrational than, "if you don't you and your family will suffer immensely for eternity, rather than be rewarded in a blissful afterlife" ?? This is the issue, and Hitchens highlights it very clearly.
>
> Such a question opens intriguing possibilities. Mr. Hitchens mocks the
> crudity of the biblical principle known in Latin as lex talionis, or
> an "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for
> a foot."
++ Now we're getting to what the author should have opened this piece with. :)
> But suppose, as Jewish teaching suggests, that the biblical
> principle put an end to the practice of taking a leg for a foot and a
> life for an eye, and in its place established a principle that, though
> differently interpreted today, remains a cornerstone of our notion of
> justice -- that the punishment should fit the crime.
++ Ahh, perfect! So if you are accused of child molestation, and found guilty by a jury, then we will molest you and then let you go. Or if you accidentally shoot your sister, then your other sister is going to shoot you. Or if you are a serial murderer, then we will kill you 11 times. Well, ALMOST 11 times. We'll torture you almost to the point of death, then do it over again 10 more times. Then we'll let you go free, because "an eye for an eye" has been full met. Needless to say, aside from my cynical examples listed here, if we based our justice system on the Bible, that would mean that all adulterers are stoned to death. Seems fair, right? "If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her." -Deuteronomy 22:28-29 Ahh... sweet Biblical justice. And wouldn't it be a wonderful world if we stoned all disobedient children to death? That's what the bible clearly orders in Deuteronomy 21:18.
>
> Similarly, Mr. Hitchens heaps scorn on the biblical story of Abraham's
> binding of Isaac, in which, at the last moment, an angel stays
> Abraham's hand. What kind of barbarian, wonders Mr. Hitchens, would
> prepare to sacrifice his son at God's command, and what kind of
> morally stunted individuals would honor such a man, or the deity who
> made the demand?
++ I would like to echo Mr. Hitchens' sentiments. What in the world is wrong with Abraham??! In our modern, secular justice system, any father who made this physical preparation and threat to his child, should be put away in prison for a long time -- even if he didn't perform Step 3 of the ritual. But in the Bible, it's okay to scar, to scare, and to torture your children to entertain your imaginary friend.
> Yet Mr. Hitchens's categorical claim that religion
> poisons everything is undermined by the common interpretation
> according to which God's testing of Abraham taught, among other
> things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice
++ and WHY was that a widespread practice?? Because of religion, not for evolutionary fitness. Ugh. This guy totally misses the point, and should NOT be writing op-eds. He makes the WSJ look really bad.
> was
> contrary to God's will, and must be put to an end forever.
>
++ Now he's REALLY reading into the story. The text reads: "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Genesis 22:12; Abraham was having his faith (and fear) of Yahweh tested by being asked to sacrifice his son. He was going slit his throat and burn him, and then at the last second, an angel of the lord told him it was just a test. Abraham was going to follow through with it. And that was one of dozens of child sacrifices written about in the Old Testament. Shame on this author for re-interpreting something so plainly written and for glorifying the tactic child sacrifice and torture.
> At the same time, Mr. Hitchens has next to nothing to say about the
> historical role of religion, particularly Christianity, particularly
> in America, in nourishing the soil in which our widely and deeply
> shared beliefs in liberty, democracy and equality took root and grew
> strong -- a subject dealt with perceptively by Yale professor of
> computer science David Gelernter in his recent book "Americanism: The
> Fourth Great Western Religion."
++ Umm... I don't think the author read the book. He must've been reading the chapter titles. Hitchens lays out an assailing argument against the role of Christianity in the drafting of law of the U.S. Constitution by our founding (largely non-Christian) fathers. And yeah, I trust a computer science professor to teach to me about the intricacies of our founding fathers' religious notions as integrated into the law of our land. Take this quote from Gelertner, "No mere secular ideology, no mere philosophical belief, could possibly have inspired the intensities of hatred and devotion that Americanism has." -Then reconcile that outlandish, unjustified statement with this one: "Few believing Americans can show, nowadays, how Americanism's principles are derived from the Bible. But many are willing to say that these principles are God-given. Freedom comes from God, George W. Bush has said more than once; and if you pressed him, I suspect you would discover that not only does he say it, he believes it. Many Americans all over the country agree with him. The idea of a 'secular' Americanism based on the Declaration of Independence is an optical illusion." Wow - talk about an "astonishing disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments." George W. Bush now decides what the founding fathers believed. Again - weak, weak, weak. Shame on WSJ for hosting such guano. Guano, because it's crap, but becomes fortified over time if there's enough of it.
>
> Mr. Hitchens anticipates that critics will point to those crimes
> against humanity, dwarfing religion's sins, committed in the name of
> secular ideas in the 20th century.
++ Like what? Nationalism? Ethnocentrism and racism? Hitchens may be right, but he has nothing to worry about. A secular idea does not necessarily equate to an idea perpetuated by non-religious folk. If you look at the numbers, the constituency of most of these "secular" atrocities is an overwhelmingly religious populous. Next argument.
> He attempts to deflect the
> challenge
++ There is no challenge. He is reinforcing his solid argument, so as to insulate it against future challenges from formidable ideological opponents. Apparently, this author missed that bus. On and on he goes, nevertheless, below...
> with sophistry: "It is interesting to find that people of
> faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists
> or Nazis or Stalinists." But who is behaving defensively here?
++ Umm... nonbelievers. And for good reason. A) They're the vast minority; B) They have been persecuted for ages for their lack of belief, regardless of validation; and C) His preparations of defense have no bearing on the argument he presents. This author is trying to paint Hitchens as being defensive, thus, "he must have something to hide." No, sir - he is defensive because of silly, whitewashing editorial attack like this piece that pop up on a daily basis against rationality and reason. It's called giving credence to an argument. Learn how to do so. Moving on...
> Mr.
> Hitchens is the one who unequivocally insists that religion poisons
> everything,
++ It does, as is demonstrated strikingly clear in his book. Note he doesn't claim that religion KILLS everything. Some things recover very well from being poisoned. But the fact remains -- there are very few innocuous religions, and those that do good usually have a lot of [undried] blood on their helping hands.
> and it is Mr. Hitchens who holds out the utopian hope that
> eradicating it will subdue humanity's evil propensities and resolve
> its enduring questions.
>
++ He never said, or even hinted, at that. He hoped that evils done in the name of religion, if emaciated, would make the world a better place. To claim that acts of harm would be alleviated by removing religion is a claim no reasonable person would (or did) state.
> Nor is his case bolstered by his observation that 20th-century
> totalitarianism took on many features of religion.
++ I'm sure we'll get a great counter-argument on this one...
> That only brings
> home the need to distinguish, as Mr. Hitchens resolutely refuses to
> do, between authentic and corrupt, and just and unjust, religious
> teachings.
++ Oops, guess he was too busy to counter the claim. Instead, he avoids it, and switches the question to one of truth and falsehood in human behavior. If that is his angle, then keep in mind that there was no one on the 9/11 flights who believed in their god more than the hijackers did. Authenticity is as much of a problem with religion than inauthenticity. Literal adherents are as frightening, and often more so, then those who piddle-paddle around everything, cherry-picking and re-interpreting die-cut bible verses out of context.
> And it begs the question of why the 20th-century embrace of
> secularism unleashed human depravity of unprecedented proportions.
++ Umm... because religion isn't the sole source of wrongdoing in the world. See above. Nationalism and ethnocentrism are among the worst modern offenders. But if religion was such a great proliferate of justice and peace, then why were the vast majority of the forces in WWII were religious (even Christian). In Hitler's Mein Kampf, he details his admiration for Martin Luther and Luther's advocacy of burning synagogues and schools, and the deportation of jews. A VERY Christian idea morphed into a nationalist campaign by many of whom were Christian and did nothing to stop it. What were Germany's Protestant churches during all of this atrocity? Signed up and participating. That's right -- fascism had to get its ideas from somewhere. Insolent 16th century Christianity was the perfect starting block. So let's drop the act of pretending that religion is a net "good" - it is not, and history shows that when you do the research. Why? My hunch is that people care a lot less about their fellow humans, and more about pleasing *their own* god, then they have an afterlife to attend to. Why else would you ruin the world and die for a silly idea? Hitchens argues, "religion."
>
> Even were he to concede that religion doesn't poison everything,
++ why would he concede something that was demonstrably false, after writing so much to prove exactly that? Okay.. hypothetical... moving on...
> Mr.
> Hitchens presumably still would cling to his claim that the findings
> of modern science prove that God does not exist.
++ Of course Hitchens clings to this idea. As would 95% of those who actually did the research enough to know better - something this author obviously cares not to do. Besides, the scientific and philosophical reasoning for the improbability of a deity was a job for Dawkins and Stenger.. you can't have all non-belief books rolled into one. It'd be thousands of pages.
> Thanks to the
> knowledge we have attained of how the natural order actually operates
> -- in particular the discoveries of Charles Darwin and modern physics
> -- he concludes that "all attempts to reconcile faith with science and
> reason are consigned to failure and ridicule."
++ He's absolutely right. Let's see if we get some counter-arguments for Hitchens' sound suppositions on this subject...
>
> This conclusion, however, contradicts that of the late Stephen Jay
> Gould, to whom Mr. Hitchens himself refers as a "great paleontologist"
> and whose authority he invokes in support of the proposition that
> randomness is an essential feature of evolution.
++ I believe this is a WTF moment. So.. WTF??! How does randomness being involved in evolution have any bearing whatsoever on the solidity of the evidence presented to us through the sciences?? This author must have never taken a biology class in his life to attribute evolution to "randomness." Natural selection capitalizes upon randomness by selecting for the most fit mutants, however much they resemble (or fail to resemble) the whole of their parents. It's called descent with modification. Descent occurs as a new generation is spawned (either sexually or asexually). Modification occurs primarily as a result of random mutation and genetic recombination between mating organisms. This is a clear example of naivety throwing a sheet over reality. This author is getting more and more desperate, reaching into his shallow pockets for evidential weapons he does not possess. Notice the omission of Gould's doubtful(though respectful) agnosticism, painting him as one who had problems with evolution as an overarching explanation, as if Gould thought evolution was insufficient of a mechanism to explain the diversity and complexity of life. Give me a break already.
>Noting surveys that
> showed that half of all scientists are religious, Gould commented
> amusingly that "Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid,
++ Yeah.. it's called a JOKE. He wouldn't seriously assert that half his colleagues, who he has to work with on a daily basis, are stupid. He is making a point with a dash of humor. Geez.
> or
> else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional
> religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism."
++ Yes, it MUST be compatible in the minds of his colleagues, otherwise they would quit their jobs in denial of what they have seen! If they continued to believe that evolution could not be a process of their god, then they would be forced to believe that all evidence they have observed was all in their imagination, and that the universe remains magical and without explanation. Instead, they did what any wise religious person would do -- compartmentalize and rationalize, shoving your god into a tiny corner of your brain, so as not to interfere with the reality of science you witness every waking day. Lots of people do this. But none of them give a coherent rationalization for believing both.. it always comes back to "faith" or "a feeling." Never underestimate the power of compartmentalized and segregated thought processes.
>
> These lines are quoted in "The Dawkins Delusion," by Alistair McGrath, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from Oxford, where
>he is
> now professor of historical theology, and by his wife Joanna Collicutt
> McGrath, who studied experimental psychology at Oxford and is
> currently a lecturer in the psychology of religion at the University
> of London.
++ Ahh, yes... "The Dawkins Delusion" -That monstrous 5X8, triple spaced, 14-point-font, 82-text-page diatribe that annihilates all notions of disbelief. Kidding. This book is a 1-hour read, and a 4 hour laugh. It used very little science (especially considering the biochemistry background of the primary author, which shows that science is not a good angle to take against atheism), but is rather full of allegory, misinformation, and misstatements about religious history, philosophy, and human behavior. It was funnier than reading The Onion. Well, that is, until I realized that people take McGrath's arguments as being true and logical.
> According to the McGraths, Gould was correct to think that
> both conventional religious belief and atheism are compatible with
> natural science, in part because "there are many questions that by
> their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate
> scope of the scientific method."
++ Such as...? I haven't heard one question to this date that couldn't be dealt with in a scientific realm, considering the tools of the trade and their ever-decreasing limitations, of course. By definition, supernature cannot exist, as it must as some point interact with nature, thus rendering itself subject to observation and examination - as a result no longer being super-natural, but natural and understood.
> Such questions -- toward which the
> mind naturally wanders, though it is susceptible to ambush by the
> crude scientism
++ Scientism: a consistent reliance on reason and evidence to make conclusions about our existence, rather than on fables and emotions.
> of which Mr. Hitchens occasionally avails himself --
> include: Where did the universe come from, and is it governed by purpose?
++ The inflationary big bang is explained beautifully by Victor Stenger, author of "God: The Failed Hypothesis". There is, and has always existed, a net balance of zero between positive and negative energy, thus requiring no initial "mover" to bring about energy, thus matter, in our universe. What is here appears to have always been here. When you fill the gaps of science with god, and then science explains the gap, bye-bye to your god. Sorry... science informs us of reality, religion distorts it.
>
> As for his claim that the Bible abounds in falsehood and
> contradiction, Mr. Hitchens makes great sport with an old straw man.
++ I wouldn't call it an old straw man. Old, yes... but a very hefty and widely hailed emperor pervades people's thinking about the clarity of the bible. And the emperor has no clothes, but he sure is no straw man - this old man is ripe for criticism and realization like he has never felt before.
> Yes, traditions teach that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, yet the
> Pentateuch refers to Moses in the third person and tells the story of
> his death. Yes, Matthew and Luke disagree on the Virgin Birth and the
> genealogy of Jesus. And so on. The literalness of Mr. Hitchens's
> readings would put many a fundamentalist to shame.
>
++ See paragraph one. If you are going to pick and choose what to take literally, then it all goes out the window. Or did god also write (or inspire) "The Holy Bible Guidebook: What I meant, and What You Wrote By Mistake"? I didn't think so. It's divine or it's man-made - You don't get to pick and choose. That was the job for the New Testament Church Council in the year 397, that of picking and choosing based on their own human morals, when they cast out the Apocryphal gospels because they were too R-rated.
> However, isolating the supposed religious significance of the Bible
> from the communities and interpretive traditions that have elaborated
> its teaching is invalid. It is like deriving the meaning of the
> Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to "The
> Federalist Papers," which provides authoritative commentary on its
> principles; without reference to the two centuries of cases and
> controversies through which the Supreme Court has sought to construe
> its meaning; and without reference to the two centuries of experience
> through which the American people have sought to put the institutional
> framework it outlines into practice.
++ The writer's point evades me. I think he is saying that we must take the bible in context in order to appreciate it. I'm not sure why he thinks Hitchens fails to understand that. After all, Hitchens does go on and on about the exact same point, from the opposite perspective. He makes clear that it was a primal, Bronze-age peoples who wrote the bible, and that the culture of war, dispute, and papal power is what kept it alive. Near-mandation of its belief, even though most believers never got a chance to read it until the late middle ages, so it was probably quite distorted and misconstrued in its teaching through the church. Looking at it in context makes it clear that it was a bad idea, made worse by those who had no choice but to take it as truth. Now we have tools of research and methods of reason that should keep us immune from such blind reliance on a text that most of its adherents have never fully read.
>
> In making his case that reason must regard faith as an enemy to be
> wiped out,
++ Hitchens never said "wiped out," as this would imply using force or law to do so. Rather, Hitchens is confident and strident about the potential of science and anti-dogmatic dissent in raising people's awareness to eradicate superstitious and primal thinking, without the need for force. People, seeing the light of reason, would be excited to leave behind the dark ages of blind, tripping faith.
> Mr. Hitchens declares Socrates's teaching that knowledge
> consists in knowing one's ignorance to be "the definition of an
> educated person." And yet Mr. Hitchens shows no awareness that his
> atheism, far from resulting from skeptical inquiry, is the rigidly
> dogmatic premise from which his inquiries proceed, and that it colors
> all his observations and determines his conclusions.
++ Au contraire, mon frère. To you, holding a standard of objectivity and empiricism to a claim before believing it equates to dogmatism. That must mean that when watching The Wizard of Oz, I am being dogmatic for believing it to be a fairy tale on a television set, rather than a reality I am immersed in. Being rational and skeptical is not dogma - it is the only way to know truth. Don't get upset and throw your *own* labels onto atheists just because your beliefs can't pass The Reality Test of being verifiable by any method. This reminds me of "I am rubber, you are glue..." and is completely nonsensical. True, people have biases, but in this case, his judgments of what is true and what is not true accord tightly with the discoveries and consensus of empirical academia.
>
> Mr. Hitchens is by far the most erudite and entertaining of the new
> new atheists. But his errors and his excesses are shared by the whole
> lot.
++ I would love to hear about some of these errors. Excesses eschewed by Hitchens could only begin to pile at the feet of the world's religions' excesses. Excess lives lost, excess brains infected, and excess progress made in the name of humanity.
> And these errors and excesses have pernicious political
> consequences, amplifying invidious distinctions among fellow citizens
++ If people grow to hate Hitchens, that's fine. I'm sure he's used to it. But that's irrelevant to whether his points are true or not. By raising eyebrows he is helping things. What must slave-owners thought when the first underground railroads began popping up? "But I treat my slaves very well! This is outrageous!" Too bad. Peaceful conflict creates awareness and tends to sort out the truth - the only thing Hitchens is meaning to do here.
> and obscuring crucial differences among believers world wide.
++ He wasn't writing a religious differences book, it was on the harmfulness of religion as a whole, detailed by giving hundreds of accounts of religiously-driven harm, correctly attributing and detailing the respective offending group. What more could you ask for? I love how people always expect 8 different books in the space of 1, and focus on the things entirely out of the scope of the book's stated preface - things like 'religious diversity.'
>
> Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today,
> the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and
> equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America.
++ What a load of shame. Though it may be true that Hitchens releases some ad hominem attacks, all of those recipients are well-deserving, even by the most respectful standards. All of his accounts are well-documented, and most offenders very overdue for ridicule. Such language does not debase interest in the reformation process, but rather, invigorates those caring about human rights and peace to investigate further. Hitchens can be abrasive, but is unparalleled in his eloquence, scholarship and sharp prose - an Ann Coulter, he is not.
> At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil
> pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions
> between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American
> citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to
> America's destruction.
++ Just because we have a common foe does not mean we are friends. Christianity is every bit as unreasonable as is Islam, so don't expect us to treat your faith with kid gloves just because we're on the same side of some issues.
>
> Like philosophy, religion, rightly understood, has a beginning in
> wonder.
++ and such wonder can be superbly filled, and drawn further, by the study of science.
> The most wonderful of creatures are human beings themselves.
++ Sometimes, that's very true. The most vile of creatures are also human beings themselves. Science gives us the explanation for this; religion just exacerbates those existing symptoms.
> Of all the Bible's sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so
> than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all
> human beings -- woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes -- are
> created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
++ More cherry-picking, I'm not surprised to see. The bible is not so kind to women, and such citations show your attempt to sugar-coat the bitter reality of the whole text of the bible. How dare you convey the overarching attitude in the bible as being respective of women. There are far too many sexist, anti-female quotes in the "good book" to name here. Try any of the dozens listed here: http://members.shaw.ca/tfrisen/Bbl/Sexism/Sexism.html
And that's not to even delve into any of the hundreds of stories in the bible detailing treatment of slaves and of those whose faith differs from your own. To exclaim that the bible provides a cogent and desirable moral framework for ethics is outrageous, and shows that a great deal of canonical scholarship is needed on the author's behalf.
>
> That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true.
++ Good thing, or we'd still believe it right to have slaves and for women to have no rights.
> But
> that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the
> Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women -- a
> belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they
> provide no compelling alternative foundation
++ In addition to a simple and overpowering innate instinct towards goodwill between neighboring humans, there exists plenty of scientific evidence that humans fare best when treating each other fairly. It is obvious we are all best off being nice to each other - it should come without thinking. Additionally, science has provided us an empirical explanation for these inherent tendencies towards respect and cooperation. Perhaps you have heard of Zoology, Psychology, Paleoanthropology, etc... ? If you need an ancient allegory of awfulness to force you to be nice to people, I seriously feel for your psychological condition.
-- is reason enough to
> give the variety of religions a fair hearing.
++ No, it's not. They all fail the Reality Test, and have no inherent basis for beneficial moral behavior. You make judgments on what verses in the bible to follow, using your innate homo sapien instincts for fair treatment. At times, mass civilization, overpopulation, and technology can muffle this instinct towards social goodwill, but overall it is always there and has only been perverted or co-opted by religious institutions in order to further their own goals.
> And it is reason enough
> to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense
> of a mysterious world.
++ Absolutely - no argument there. But help is on the way. Soon, religious-minded folk will no longer need to use superstition and archaic myths and folk tales to become informed about the world in which they live. Scientific naturalism allows them far more wonder than does religion, and creates a sense of simultaneous pride and humility about how far we've come, how lucky we are, and how little precious time on earth we have to enjoy its sheer brilliance.
>
> Mr. Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution,
> teaches at George Mason University School of Law.
>
Brian
Other Comments by buhbriantwo
39. Comment #57028 by IQHQ on July 18, 2007 at 7:25 am
buhbriantwo"If one refuses to adhere "slavishly literally" to the Bible, then why take such writings seriously at all?"
I have long made a slightly similar argument in debate with theists, namely that if biblical writings are meant to be interpreted subjectively, and their content viewed as of a solely metaphorical value, then why treat them any differently than, say the writings of Dostoevsky or Goethe or Shakespeare? I put the point that any time we read anything at all, it is a subjective interpretive exercise, considering that over and above the (relatively) fixed definition of words are connections in how our minds understand those words. Yet from reviewing the answers I get back, and from my own reflections, I seem to understand where Christians are coming from on this point and this is how:
The Bible is the story of man's strivings for the Divine. The whole Bible must be seen as one whole, and thus to selectively demean a particular verse is a redundant criticism. Covenental understandings in Christianity are that Jesus was the fulfillment and culmination of these strivings, and thus to pick at the immorality of "an eye for an eye" is superfluous given that, for Christians, Jesus already did so! Another problem, one casually overlooked by most on this website who amateurishly indulge in a sort of mock biblical analysis, is that the non-religious people at this time were quite naturally every bit as bad, morally. Perhaps, they were even worse. Not to see things in their historical context (and to hence compare biblical events against a modern context of perceived maturity, is therefore wilfully negligent (and for ulterior motives). It is Jesus, and Jesus alone, who is said (in the Bible) to have the divine eternity shining through him. Before him, the Messiah had not come and the Jews were (it is said) groping in the dark. Now, as atheists, we may laugh at anyone placing value on the mythical import (or metaphorical value) of this story. Yet, consider for yourself how central a role myth plays in your own life. Myths of beauty, myths of strength, everyone has many "ideals" in their mind. Every time we turn on the TV! We cannot escape myth, no matter how hard we try. It has ALWAYS been a factor in human development. What Christians say is merely that this is the one myth (or framework or model or metaphor) that truely holds out a promise of substance, unlike many of the superficial illusions we buy into as humans (or, more appropriately in this context, as consumers). That they correlate this into an external picture of reality may be essential if this framework is to bear fruit the way it is intended. I notice regularly how many of us atheists view the apparent happiness of
1. Comment #56564 by newskin on July 16, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Other Comments by newskin