ME: I'll start with Terry Eagleton. Thanks again for posting these critiques Judy.
His criticism of Dawkins proposes an argument that the New Testament Jesus offers a perspective of God that is much improved from the Old Testament Jewish version. It borders on an antisemitic rant at one point. He dismisses other popular versions of religious fundamentalist perspectives as harshly as Dawkins does. It seems that fundamentalists of all religions just can't get a break from atheists or their critics. If you take your scripture seriously as the literal word of God, you are just an uneducated rube. Here are my main problems with his critique. First, he failures to answer this questions : 1. Is the Bible a different kind of book from other books created by man? How does he know? Once we decide that they are specially inspired by God, how do we know which parts we should take seriously and which are just metaphors? Do the parts that start with "God said" mean that God said those things? Should we put people to death for worshiping other Gods? If religious people would hand over the conception that their specific religious books are different from other books created by man, we would all just be back in the same human family together,living in a world of wonder to explore and hypothesize about. But telling Dawkins that his taking the source books of a religion seriously and at face value is unfair, is completely bogus. Either these books are different from other acts of human creation, or they are not. If they are then any line that starts with "God said" must be taken seriously. He is claiming that only people who have studied theology at a high level should be taken seriously on these topics. This is just religious and academic elitism. There are millions of people in the world who do believe in their scriptures literally. If a comparatively few academics have a more nuanced view, good for them, they are not the ones strapping on the bombs over tiny differences in religious doctrine. They are also not helping dispute the claim that is causing the problem, that my God book told me to kill you. HIM: Christianity teaches that to claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. ME: 2. He is presenting the ontological leap of his religious beliefs. Here he begins a description that is meant to show how much more sophisticated his Christian view of God is than Jews and fundamentalists. OK so he has established that his God is more like Casper than the physical Loch Ness Monster. Fine, so God is invisible. This is not exactly earth shattering but lets see where he is going with this. HIM: This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself: not, as Dawkins thinks, in the guise of a cosmic manufacturer even smarter than Dawkins himself (the New Testament has next to nothing to say about God as Creator), but for Christians at least, in the form of a reviled and murdered political criminal. The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound. ME: Now we get down to his real bias. He is using Jesus as the revealed form of the invisible God. The New Testament is repetitive and clear about why we should believe this to be so. It is because of the reported miracles and the similarity of the circumstances of Jesus' life to the Jewish Messiah myth. None of Jesus' teachings were philosophically unique, despite Christians attempts to assert this. His most popular teachings are not even unique to our species, forgiveness is a quality of all social primate cultures. He never denounced the message of the Old Testament or its laws which Terry will ridicule later. Terry's belief in God is based on his belief in the specialness of Jesus. He points out that the New Testament doesn't identify God as a creator and seems to be making fun of Dawkins for viewing him that way. His point about how the Jews came to their belief in him as a creator dodges the ontological leap. They made up a story about how creation came into being. They are welcome to their opinion and mythology. But I draw the line when they assert that it is more than than because it came from revealed scripture. They are winging it concerning ultimate questions. I just need a little humility here. We don't know how we came to be. Specifically, religious people haven't answered these questions because they have old books that claim to answer them. HIM: Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized. He asks how this chap can speak to billions of people simultaneously, which is rather like wondering why, if Tony Blair is an octopus, he has only two arms. For Judeo-Christianity, God is not a person in the sense that Al Gore arguably is. Nor is he a principle, an entity, or `existent': in one sense of that word it would be perfectly coherent for religious types to claim that God does not in fact exist. He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects. ME: First he castigates Dawkins for taking the Old Testament at its word, where God clearly is a chap. He goes on to assert God's nature as he understands it. This is as close to a definition as we are going to get from him after the whole "neti neti" not this not this process. so here we go: HIM : He is, rather, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves. He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. God and the universe do not add up to two, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects. ME: He is trying a bit of ontological slight-of-hand here. He is trying to establish something above the primacy of existence by assertion without any basis. We are not required to have a prior "possibility of any entity whatsoever" because we have the entities themselves in the form of all living creatures. He is inventing the need for the "condition of possibility". This is the essence of the ontological leap that atheists don't buy. It is a presumptive assertion without any logical necessity. It is made up. His next statement seems to be an assertion that his created God is of a different nature from physical objects. Fine, he can give it any qualities he wants because he is the one who made him up and gave him those qualities. But his entomological basis has already been asserted as the form of Jesus. So here is the philosophical dodge ball he is playing. For all his sophisticated thinking, he is still left with a basic simple argument. He is basing his belief in God on Jesus, but Terry is the one who will decide which parts of scripture will be taken seriously and how metaphors should be interpreted. In short, he wants to assert his own opinions over the scriptural sources themselves because he has special insight from all his theological study. But when he violates basic rules for reasonable thinking, he will be subject to criticism by atheists. Once again, " Is the Bible divinely special or not? If not, join the part of humble thinkers working on the questions of life. Just don't show up with a badge that says "Knower". HIM: Dawkins's Supreme Being is the God of those who seek to avert divine wrath by sacrificing animals, being choosy in their diet and being impeccably well behaved. They cannot accept the scandal that God loves them just as they are, in all their moral shabbiness. This is one reason St Paul remarks that the law is cursed. Dawkins sees Christianity in terms of a narrowly legalistic notion of atonement of a brutally vindictive God sacrificing his own child in recompense for being offended and describes the belief as vicious and obnoxious. It's a safe bet that the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn't agree more. It was the imperial Roman state, not God, that murdered Jesus. ME: Here he goes into his Old Testament God-bashing bit. He is blaming Dawkins for not being a Christian and dismissing the Jewish version of God in the scriptures. He has to use Paul as a source for saying the law is cursed because Jesus himself supported every Jot an Tittle of the law. (Please correct me if I have that word wrong but I couldn't resist a word like "tittle") I will let Jewish people defend themselves but if I was Jewish, I would be pissed at his reduction of their religion into the same caricature he tries to accuse Dawkins for doing to Christianity. Trying to blame Dawkins for stories in the Old Testament as if Dawkins made up Biblical sacrifice is disingenuous at best. I read the books, I know what is in them. Sacrificial killings to appease God is a huge part of most world religions including the Vedic literature. And back then it was not just a metaphor. As far as his dismissing the theology of Jesus' blood sacrifice as an atonement for our original sin, I can only wonder what brand of Christianity he is practicing. It is at the core of every version I am aware of. It is not ambiguous or up for debate. Here he loses ten credibility points for even daring to blame Dawkins for presenting and criticizing a fundamental tenant of Christianity. If he wants to go New Age and drop this made-up nonsense, fine. But don't shoot the messenger for a basic belief of Christianity, or deny that it is one. Him: The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals. Me: Here is engages in the exact thing he accuses Dawkins of. He is making it seem like the people who sincerely believe in what the scriptures directly say about gay people are somehow flawed themselves, rubes who don't have his sophistication or education. He is pointing out the problem of taking scriptures as special books rather than another opinion. If he is making this assertion he has crossed the same line they are. He is taking the ontological leap of assumption that he knows something exists beyond the primacy of existence and even worse, that he knows what that specifically means. Blaming people for taking special God books at their word shows a profound lack of understanding of the atheist's points. They are different from fundamentalists only in degree, not in taking that first important assumptive step. He doesn't understand the leap he is making. But it is very clear to someone outside him. Just as it is clear to him that a person reading the scriptures literally as the word of God and hating gay people, are wrong. But he is missing the point that these people are just as sincere as he is in their beliefs, just as pious and sometimes just as thoughtful. The flaw in thinking is the claim that mythological stories have a unique credibility outside the good thinking skills we employ to analyze and discuss other human ideas. What he says after he makes this leap and the other ontological assumptions may be fascinating and brilliant. But philosophically it boils down to the same simple thing, an unsupported leap of faith and a subjective method for deciding what is true without any of the assistance from fields like epistemology, which have been so helpful to sort out man's creative ideas. Every thought is not equally valid. It is time to use all our thinking tools to address world problems not authority based religious beliefs. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > > > > http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19140641/site/newsweek/ > > > > This topic interests me. It is a dilemma for non believers. > > The challenge of staying in rapport while being true to your > > own position, which is by definition, a negation of someone > > else's POV. Right now there are a few books out that aren't > > pulling any punches and some come off as pretty caustic to > > believers. I keep reading criticisms of these books that > > focus on their disrespectful tone and a claim that the > > authors are unfairly lumping together fundamentalists > > believers with people the reviewers consider more thoughtful, > > (themselves). Sometimes the reviewers come off as just as > > rudely dismissive of fundamentalist believers as the atheists. > > I don't see anyone spelling out what exactly their God belief > > includes in any detail. Just a lot of dodge ball, "That isn't > > my version, not that either, nope you aren't talking about > > mine". Andrew Sullivan was the master of this game in his > > debate with Sam Harris, reducing his God belief into certain > > uncontroversial human emotions, (We all like puppies right? > > Then my God is puppies). > > Your parenthetical above, just for the record, > is exactly the sort of thing the reviewers are > complaining about, and with good reason. > > As Terry Eagleton says in his review of > Dawkins's book: > > "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only > knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, > and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to > read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying > rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to > a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand > Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to > understand what they castigate, since they don't > believe there is anything there to be understood, or at > least anything worth understanding. > > "This is why they invariably come up with vulgar > caricatures of religious faith that would make a > first-year theology student wince. The more they detest > religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it > tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on > phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they > would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously > as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any > shoddy old travesty will pass muster." > > http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html > > Eagleton also gives a rather specific definition > of God, although I doubt it would be specific > enough to satisfy Curtis. > > Here's a comment from another review of Hitchens's > book: > > "As for straw-man argument, a single example suffices > to reveal Hitchens's petulant mediocrity in philosophy. > The notion of a creator, he observes, raises 'the > unanswerable question of who...created the creator'-- > an objection that theologians 'have consistently failed > to overcome.' > > "Really? Any decent freshman survey could have informed > Hitchens that, as Aquinas and many others have patiently > explained, God is not an entity and thus is not ensnared > in any serial account of causality. Not a thing himself, > God is rather the condition of there being anything at > all. > > "Thus, 'creation' is not a gargantuan act of handicraft > but rather the condition of there being something rather > than nothing. Creation didn't happen long ago; it's > right now, and forever. (This is why 'creationism' is > bad science--because it's bad theology.)" > > http://tinyurl.com/2ezkws > (from "Commonweal" magazine) > > Atheists tend to be exceedingly unsophisticated > metaphysically, so when a believer doesn't define > God in similarly unsophisticated terms, in the > kind of concrete detail that is the only approach > the atheists know how to deal with, the atheists > think the believer must be playing "dodgeball." >
