November 01, 2007
What the New Atheists Don’t See
Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal:
The British parliament’s first avowedly atheist member, Charles Bradlaugh, would stride into public meetings in the 1880s, take out his pocket watch, and challenge God to strike him dead in 60 seconds. God bided his time, but got Bradlaugh in the end. A slightly later atheist, Bertrand Russell, was once asked what he would do if it proved that he was mistaken and if he met his maker in the hereafter. He would demand to know, Russell replied with all the high-pitched fervor of his pedantry, why God had not made the evidence of his existence plainer and more irrefutable. And Jean-Paul Sartre* came up with a memorable line: “God doesn’t exist—the bastard!”
Sartre’s wonderful outburst of disappointed rage suggests that it is not as easy as one might suppose to rid oneself of the notion of God. (Perhaps this is the time to declare that I am not myself a believer.) At the very least, Sartre’s line implies that God’s existence would solve some kind of problem—actually, a profound one: the transcendent purpose of human existence. Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signi-fies nothing.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 01:31 PM | Permalink
Comments
More rubbish.
Posted by: anon | Nov 1, 2007 2:19:05 PM
And why is it rubbish to hold the means of investigation to their own standard?
Posted by: Damien | Nov 1, 2007 2:50:03 PM
The use of purposeful language for describing evolutionary forces falls squarely within the difficult linguistic game of what Ernst Mayr called teleonomic (purposefulness appearing from an evolutionary algorithm). I don't see Dennett's language as problematic and, in fact, see conveying the emergence of purpose from self-organization to be the core of Dennett's argument.
Posted by: Erdos56 | Nov 1, 2007 4:04:16 PM
I agree with Erdos on that, without necessarily agreeing with Dennett. What Dennett is saying breaks no rule. Regardless of whether or not Dan's faith in his theory about the development of the coyote's locomotion is bourne out, he is best served by being able to use whatever language best describes the effect.
Mostly, though, I just wanted an Erdos number of 1!
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 1, 2007 4:31:01 PM
Is a world without God a world empty of purpose? Don't people give purpose? And is Dalrymple excluding himself with his "many people"?
Posted by: Sagredo | Nov 1, 2007 6:07:03 PM
"Is a world without God a world empty of purpose?"
Well, yes, probably. Do you know something we don't? And if so, how do you know it?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 1, 2007 8:11:24 PM
I have purpose. I'm in the world. Therefore the world is not empty of purpose. But perhaps that's too facetious?
Dalrymple seems to have chosen his phrase "empty the world of purpose" misleadingly, like he wanted to suggest both that the world was not created with a purpose (which is what atheism usually implies) and that there is no purpose to be found in the world (and therefore, why care?).
Gratitude is another matter. Part of what's "necessary for both happiness and decency" is indeed gratitude, for example, the ability to say to someone "Thank you for being in my life". But there's more to that feeling, it also carries the sense of "I'm glad you exist", even though that person is not responsible for their own birth. Sure, if you're theistic, you can call that being thankful to God, instead. But is it necessary to call it that?
Posted by: Sagredo | Nov 1, 2007 9:18:10 PM
Thor will not be pleased with that article.
Posted by: GFS3 | Nov 1, 2007 10:53:52 PM
Sagredo, I think gratitude can exist without theistic implications. But implicit in gratitude is the feeling to which you alluded, the acknowledgment that some things are entirely out of our control -- who exists, whose paths we cross, etc. (If there is a God I very much doubt it would be interested or involved in the minutiae of our lives.) However, in the New Atheists' work there is an unsettling current of arrogance, a suggestion that if there is no God, I am God. I think Dalrymple is answering this hubris, because dispensing with God shouldn't mean dispensing with humility and gratitude; isn't the delusion of total control over one's life is as dangerous as the delusion of external supernatural control over one's life?
I apologize if that was rambling and nonsensical. It's late, but there's no time to engage these threads at work!
Posted by: Trish | Nov 2, 2007 1:09:39 AM
"But how can reality have any moral quality without having an immanent or transcendent purpose?"
This question - like much else in the article - presupposes that immanence or transcendence is a prerequisite for morality. It isn't. The resulting morality - rooted in mans experience and judgements - may not be to everybody's taste, but there's not much Dalrymple, I or anybody else can do about that.
Posted by: merkur | Nov 2, 2007 12:52:17 PM
I think the article is rather a strawman argument.
Posted by: beajerry | Nov 3, 2007 4:07:31 AM
"I think the article is rather a strawman argument."
Fair enough. Can you be more specific?
Whose position is mis-characterized? And in what way?
Posted by: Carlos | Nov 3, 2007 9:29:47 AM
IIRC, Russell's imagined the after-wordly scene thus: he would answer, "Lord, we could not know; there was not enough evidence."
G-d, who would be a Scottish Presbyterian, would answer, "Well, ye ken noo!" -- and damn him to hell.
Posted by: Dabodius | Nov 4, 2007 11:04:02 PM
Did you really have to link to City Journal? Yikes.
Posted by: instafaggot | Nov 6, 2007 5:40:38 PM
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