Axess Magazine, 2008
Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried ‘Ecrasez l’infâme!’. Scores of enlightened thinkers followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and which thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins is the most influential living example of this tradition, and his message, echoed by Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, sounds as loud and strident in the media today as the message of Luther in the reformed churches of Germany. The violence of the diatribes uttered by these evangelical atheists is indeed remarkable. After all, the Enlightenment happened three centuries ago; the arguments of Hume, Kant and Voltaire have been absorbed by every educated person. What more is to be said? And if you must say it, why say it so stridently? Surely, those who oppose religion in the name of gentleness have a duty to be gentle, even with – especially with – their foes?
November 02, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
12 comments:
Please re-examine Dan Dennett's work. I think you'll find he is unusually polite and generous with his opponents.
I am an atheist (not an agnostic - no fence-sitting for me) and also an English patriot and traditionalist, which puts me in a curious position concerning our beautiful parish churches (we have a Norman one with 18th-C restoration work here in Kensworth, Beds.). I love to see them in the landscape but can't see the point of what goes on inside them, except as moving ritual.
Isn't it true, however, that Voltaire and company simultaneously inveighed against deity and announced the preeminence of mankind? The neo-atheists declare any confession of human exceptionalism to be speciesist. Against Pascal's anthropological credo that man is both the treasure and trash of the universe, the evangelical atheists see only refuse--except for themselves, of course.
Mr. Scruton,
I just recently re-read your essay on T.S. Eliot and conservatism. In it, you discuss at length the role religion plays in self reflection, and how that process is vital to conservatism. I am wondering how you feel about the current "crisis' of conservatism. It seems to me that while conservative pundits argue about particular policy prescriptions, no one is discussing conservatism within the context of freedom and truth. Moreover, while many scorn social conservatives, the role of religion in conservatism, as illustrated by Eliot, is never articulated. I was curious for your thoughts on these developments.
These men are exercising their democratic right to express their opinions. And in expressing their opinions they are not in any way being violent.
Words in and of themselves are not violent. They can indeed incite people to violence.
But even then the people who thus commit violence are already emotionally predisposed to do so.
Bearing in mind also, that we all exist in a vast universal pattern of relationships which in one way or another are all interconnected.
And some, for whatever combination of personal and cultural factors, SNAP, and thus become conduits for the release and dramatisation onto the world stage of the vast hell-deep psychic reservoir of fear, sorrow and anger in which we ALL immersed or entangled.
And besides which Sam Harris, in particular, has some very interesting and necessary things to say about the idiocies and dangers of right wing religionists (wherever they are) who would, if given half the chance, impose their inherently intolerant religiosity onto everyone else.
Harris is also supportive of and even advocates a non-sectarian Spiritual understanding of Reality altogether.
Whereas, by contrast, most of your right-thinking friends promote the false notion that Christianity is the ONLY true religion. Which of course means that ALL other religions and their cultural expressions are false, and therefore have to be converted, by whatever means available, to the one "true" way.
Such is the case with your right-thinking friends at the EPPC? And indeed all of your right-thinking fellow travellers. They are not exactly advocates of universal compassion and understanding either.
What about the raving loony psychopath Victor Davis Hanson?
When I see you criticising his manichean rantings, then I might perhaps start to take you seriously.
So to with the likes of William Bennett!
Most of what is called "religion" in todays world is a form of pious childish and alternately adolescent consumerism.
It is full of posturing, bargain hunting, haggling and deceitful practices of al kinds---whereby the client-like consumer, whether as an individual or as a socially defined collective, seeks to acquire what is desired and consoling and satisfying to the always wanting and demanding consumer.
The "religious" form of the consumer wants and seeks, as if in a marketplace, what it can beg, take, somehow earn, or otherwise acquire from the presumed storeowning shopkeeper "god".
The consumer person uses "religious" means to seek and demand what the parent-like "god" can do for the alternately childish and otherwise adolscent consumer in the midst of its vulnerable and nsatisfactory conditions of life.
By contrast the Process that IS True Religion IS a perpetual tacit demand for the moment to moment transcending of the very childish and/or adolescent craving neediness that motivates the consumer mentality altogether.
To G. Asher,: Yes, I was wrong to imply that Dennett shares the stridency of Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins - although he argues from the same premise, that the theory of evolution is sufficient to settle the question of God's existence - interestingly amplifying Darwin, however, with the idea of the evolution of the universe by natural selection among random variations of basic conditions and governing laws. (See Freedom Evolves, 2003) Your position about Parish churches is nicely captured by Philip Larkin in 'Church Going' - I assume you know the poem. I imagine many Greeks felt the same way about the Temples of the gods in Hellenistic times.
To Jason,: In my view it is necessary to distinguish conservatism as a political response to modernity, from conservatism as an outlook on the human condition as such. Eliot embraced both; but the political response aims at a broad coalition of threatened interests, and welcomes atheists and agnostics, cynics and satirists, and all who know that it is easier to destroy than to create. The outlook on the human condition is founded in piety, and the recognition of the sacred. It is restless until it rests in God.
To Anon,: I agree with some people of right-wing views, that is true. I have right-wing views myself. I am a sceptical Anglican. But let's be calm about all this. I agree with some people of left-wing views. I am in favour of religious toleration and the separation of church and state. I happen to believe that there is more to religion than the belief in a creator God, and that this
something more needs to be taken on board by the critics of religion.
I also believe that it is not taken on board by those I mention.
Very well said Mr Scruton. It reminds of something Bernard Williams said in an interview;
"The people I really do dislike are the morally unimaginative kind of evolutionary reductionists who in the name of science think they can explain everything in terms of our early hominid ancestors or our genes, with their combination of high-handed tone and disregard for history. Such reductive speculation encourages a really empty scientism."
The lack of a sense of history is palpable in today's world. We really do seem to live in that 'permanent present' Hobsbawm saw as the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the twentieth century.
Looking forward to your paper on friday.
Dear Professor Scruton
As usual, a thoughtful and stimulating essay on the roots of religious consciousness, no matter what one's particular creed. However, I would be interested to know your opinion on a couple (of the hundreds) of conundrums that have always bothered me:
Given the necessity of religious consciousness as basic for our sense of meaningfulness in the world, it seems difficult to square the fact that so many human beings have lived with sheer depersonalising pain, poverty or mental incapacity, with the religious view that we are each of us significant as individual selves. (Russell and Dostoyevsky, for instance, would not agree with Spinoza's view that the goodness of the whole or the end justifies the badness/cruelty of the parts.)
Assuming the truth of evolutionary biology, that is, the development of species, including our own, through time, I find it surprising that no one seems to discuss the importance of the concept of time here. Our assessment of the significance of evolution, therefore of human beings, surely depends on the truth about time. Might not Kant be useful here, insofar as his transcendental idealism implies that all physical processes do indeed take place in time but that time itself is an a priori condition of the existence of physical objects, processes, etc? In short, the scientific worldview is true but secondary, precisely because it depends on the prior existence of consciousness and its basic forms, space and time. If so, the self is not something that has evolved or developed in time. If there is anything helpful in Kant's philosophy here, might we not also look to, say, Heidegger's view that our sense of time virtually defines us as 'spiritual' beings?
Thank you for taking the time to read the above, which I hope makes sense.
Funnily enough, I had a similar conversation recently (fellow Tory atheist actually), who got quite hot under the collar on the subject of religious folks. Damming them all to hell in fact (sorry). Thing is, regardless of God, popular religion does do a lot of good.
- It gives ordinary folks a focus to consider their lives, actions and feelings on a higher moral plane that is very effective without resorting to Rick Lake or the moral philosophy levels of an Oxford Don. It covers all the bases - moral issues, right and wrong the importance of considering ones actions, loyalty and charity as well as coping with grief, by using the only real messenger who can hit home, a supernatural being who judges.
- For many older Christian communities, although admittedly much less these days, it provides a focus through the local church which transgresses the day to day, many are baptised, married and buried in the same church - as were their forefathers and so will future generations
So there are two very positive influences of religion, it supports people both personally, in the family and in the community. I don't personally believe in God, but I do know supporting the Church is about more than the afterlife, its really about this one.
Dear Professor Scruton,
I'd be interested to know what your opinions are on "altered states of conscious". I know it's a huge subject, but I can't recall your ever mentioning it and I'd be interested in any comments.
As you probably know there's be a suggestion that they are particular to physiologically modern man (c.f. David Lewis-William's books _The Mind in the Cave_ and _Inside the Neolithic Mind_.) It's interesting in itself that Neanderthal Man, to our best guess, was relatively uninterested in art, and the connection between the cave paintings and such states seems established beyond doubt by a number of different arguments.
For example, those who were still making these paintings in the (relatively) recent past (Bushmen and North American Indians) showed great interest in these states, were evidently referring to them (albeit through metaphor - "died", "gone under water") when questioned, and painted in such a way - elongated figures, the odd overlay of geometrical shapes - as to show they were likely in such states when painting.
There are some interesting connections with religion, too, which, as well as art and aesthetics, seems to be one of your professional interests. Primitive religion certainly involves such states - and for the matter of that so do more advanced religions across vast areas of the globe. One only has to think of Buddhism, where "meditation" - i.e., deliberately induced altered states of consciousness - is basic to religious practice (for the ordained, at least - not (traditionally) for the laity).
And yet in the West we've become progressively more and more interested in the deliverances of normal consciousness - the waking mind. Indeed, we're sceptical - perhaps rightly - of anything else. This is throughout our religion - before it was even in retreat (and c.f. Bishop Butler), throughout our society - and, of course, what's philosophy about if not the deliverances of waking conscious, exhaustively worked through in the ordinary waking state?
So - what's going on in these unexplored regions of consciousness? Is what is of any interest? Or do we know too little to even say? Should psychologists be looking there to find out?
Isn't it a bit silly for atheists to argue against the existence of God? How is it possible for anyone to argue for or against something that does not exist? No, the truth is God, does indeed, exist. If god did not exist it would be impossible to discuss it. The real issue is the nature of God: A figment of man's imagination? A creature with awesome power? what? But the discussion of the nature of God is a discussion of dogma. Just as Muslims dispute the dogma of Christians, so too do atheists dispute the dogma of all religions. Atheism is the dogma of the "zero", the nothing. Many intellectuals fall into this nihilistic trap. Just like in mathematics, zero can reduce anything to zero by multiplication. In a similar vein, the argument of the zero reduces any rational thought to zero: That is to say, no rational thought. Its the cowards answer, for if it is zero, then I do not need to think about it, discuss it, etc. It does not answer the question, What is God's nature? It merely avoids it.
Post a Comment