A feminist atheist critique of Dawkins - draft
I've been trying to work out what it is about Richard Dawkins that makes me think he's such a tool, despite me generally agreeing with everything he has to say on a basic level. Since a nice conversation with my flatmate yesterday, I think I have some thoughts worked out. But I am not doing well at expressing it.
I know I'm opening myself up to a storm with the below, as probably not everyone here identifies as atheist. Though the below expresses my suspicions, I'd welcome ways of sharpening the expression of it, and it is to a certain extent a thought experiment rather than something I think is anywhere near right just yet. I don't really want to begin a 'yes but God does/doesn't exist' discussion here though (though I know things can end up that way on comms). I also accept that many of its assertions presume atheism, and if a religious perspective can help me critically, then great and thank you.
So, maybe this is useful/interesting/relevant to
feminist. Let me know if not, though. And as always, please flag up any racist or classist language that I have been unsuccessful in trying to iron out.
The God Delusion was, to me, not always well-argued, but articulated my position on religion very accurately. It certainly makes you realise why Dawkins is in essence a scientist, and not by nature a sociologist or a politically-driven writer. Many of his arguments seem to end with appeals to common sense, rather than genuinely following a moralistic argument through to its bitter end. And I have a problem with unexamined 'common sense'.
For me, he is either too apolitical in the formation of his arguments, or - worse - he doesn't acknowledge the political situatedness of his point of view. Certain moralities are self-evident to him, and he tends to give the idea of multiple truths very short shrift. His positionality as a scientist seems to explain this - yet my impression of those scientists really at the rock face of 'truth' are actually more accepting of the notion of multiple and shifting truths, and much less accepting of 'common sense', than anyone else. They understand that the more you scrutinise something, the more complex it becomes, and both scientifically and socially, ones own presence as a 'neutral' commentator is impossible - one always affects the experiment. Enlightenment values work for empiricism, but not necessarily the experience of scientific truth.
This becomes problematic with Dawkin's rather quick waving-away of postmodern 'truth', because while I somehow think that postmodern 'truth' is rather problematically watered-down, socially simplified into relativism, his reassertion of a basic level of truth as we all see it repositions him comfortably as the Bringer of Knowledge. He is, for me, rather too accepting of enlightenment values.
My problem with this is its supposed apoliticality. He does, sometimes, invoke the terrible harms visited on women, homosexuals, and people of colour via religion, as part of his argumentation. But not so much. These casualties are somehow pawns in the argument, to him, not an urgently-felt reality. It's the white middle class man throwing his last dice in the parlour-room games. Because what he really wants to defend is Reason, which is a far, far more precious thing to protect than the lives and welfares of all these terribly unfortunate (and possibly slightly easily duped) people who were unfortunate enough to be born without a penis or outside of Europe. Reason, which always, always reasserts the primacy of the white bourgeois male. Reason, which he is so keen to pretend can exist without some form of positionality, because we always know that when a white bourgeois male uses Reason, he has no positionality. When anyone else uses Reason, it's 'from the perspective of', always located, always partial, never all-seeing like the white man's Reason.
So my first objection is the idea that it is abstract ideals of Reason he wants to protect, as though it automatically follows that this will filter through to real people and real lives. When historically, this hasn't been the case. You need a bit of politics to get Reason moving towards real life justice, and I see a real lack of political urgency in the tone of his argumentation. Acknowledged political urgency, that is. The next bit describes what I perceive as the invisible white male politics behind his fear of religion.
And he gets really enraged about attacks on Reason In a recent TV programme about the charlatanism of alternative medicine (which in some cases I don't really question) he uses quite shocking hyperbole about science being 'under attack' - yes, tissue salts, they're gonna bring the apocalypse! In his assertions (which, if they came from a woman, would be characterised as 'hysterical') you can sense the blind panic of something more than simply argumentation.
I have thought about quite why he gets so enraged, so insecure, about religion. It's because religion, out of all the world's unfairnesses, all the world's idiocies, all its prejudices and attacks on Reason - is the only one that exists at the level of institution, and thereby is an attack on the white bourgeois male in his very own territory. Dawkins hates religion because it is a parliamentary, tax-sustained, institutionalised contradiction of his reality. What a shock, to the white bourgeois male, to have his Reason contradicted, right there in his safety zone! At the level of the institution, which traditionally protects all male interests! While everyone else in the world has their reality contradicted, their interests overridden, the truth of their experience denied by the institution every day (real rape is only real in X conditions, racism isn't real, offensive material is just 'humour', the police are here to protect us, schools are here to help us, can't you just get over it?), the experience of this is a lot more shocking to our poor, coddled, establishment white man.
When I get angry about religion, I get angry because of its direct or indirect impact on my body, my choices, my sexuality, my pay, the very existence of my closest personal relationship, my mother's and my grandmother's entire life, I get angry because I have to march on the streets, hold banners, give my own capital and time to organisations, all the while carrying a rape alarm, in order to have even a hope of maintaining the delicate and partial framework of institutionalised truth that happens to protect my interests against religion, and that because I am fortunate enough to live in a rich European city. Reason has always been denied to me on these counts. Dawkins is just feeling the first cold breeze of prejudice penetrate deep within his white man's palace, and it's largely this that informs his critique of religion.
Enlightenment values have always served the white bourgeois male first and foremost, just like religion. Just like religion, it claims and defines itself by the desire to do good, and only really allows one kind of truth.
********************
And yet I know how this feeds very closely alongside the common critiques offered by religious people.
§ 'Enlightenment values are just another religion'. No, I will never agree with that. It's just another interest that serves the dominant group. This is a mistake based on a misunderstanding of the atheist use of words like 'belief'.
§ 'By denying the possibility of empiricism finding an ultimate truth, aren't you leaving the possibility of God open?' Well, yes. Here I agree with Dawkins; even within the impossibility of ultimate empirical truth, we can still say the possibility of God is vanishingly tiny, enough for daily speech to permit the statement 'there is no God'.
§ 'If you're so against enlightenment values, why are you an atheist?' Good question. I'm hugely ambivalent about the Enlightenment because of its imbedded failure to recognise its own positionality and to admit multiple truths; I largely go with contemporary Enlightenment's anti-religion thrust, because this can be still be shared with non-Enlightenment points of view. Exactly how, I still haven't worked out. I could do with help/critique on that one.
§ 'I believe that God exists, and I'm a feminist, and I feel these things are compatible. There follow natural consequences against your argumentation as a result, because your post presumes an atheist position.' Yes - I accept this. Please critique if you wish. :)
§ There's more, but I've forgotten.
Thanks for the feedback.
close versions of this x-posted to my LJ,
feminist, and another comm.
I know I'm opening myself up to a storm with the below, as probably not everyone here identifies as atheist. Though the below expresses my suspicions, I'd welcome ways of sharpening the expression of it, and it is to a certain extent a thought experiment rather than something I think is anywhere near right just yet. I don't really want to begin a 'yes but God does/doesn't exist' discussion here though (though I know things can end up that way on comms). I also accept that many of its assertions presume atheism, and if a religious perspective can help me critically, then great and thank you.
So, maybe this is useful/interesting/relevant to
feminist. Let me know if not, though. And as always, please flag up any racist or classist language that I have been unsuccessful in trying to iron out.
The God Delusion was, to me, not always well-argued, but articulated my position on religion very accurately. It certainly makes you realise why Dawkins is in essence a scientist, and not by nature a sociologist or a politically-driven writer. Many of his arguments seem to end with appeals to common sense, rather than genuinely following a moralistic argument through to its bitter end. And I have a problem with unexamined 'common sense'.
For me, he is either too apolitical in the formation of his arguments, or - worse - he doesn't acknowledge the political situatedness of his point of view. Certain moralities are self-evident to him, and he tends to give the idea of multiple truths very short shrift. His positionality as a scientist seems to explain this - yet my impression of those scientists really at the rock face of 'truth' are actually more accepting of the notion of multiple and shifting truths, and much less accepting of 'common sense', than anyone else. They understand that the more you scrutinise something, the more complex it becomes, and both scientifically and socially, ones own presence as a 'neutral' commentator is impossible - one always affects the experiment. Enlightenment values work for empiricism, but not necessarily the experience of scientific truth.
This becomes problematic with Dawkin's rather quick waving-away of postmodern 'truth', because while I somehow think that postmodern 'truth' is rather problematically watered-down, socially simplified into relativism, his reassertion of a basic level of truth as we all see it repositions him comfortably as the Bringer of Knowledge. He is, for me, rather too accepting of enlightenment values.
My problem with this is its supposed apoliticality. He does, sometimes, invoke the terrible harms visited on women, homosexuals, and people of colour via religion, as part of his argumentation. But not so much. These casualties are somehow pawns in the argument, to him, not an urgently-felt reality. It's the white middle class man throwing his last dice in the parlour-room games. Because what he really wants to defend is Reason, which is a far, far more precious thing to protect than the lives and welfares of all these terribly unfortunate (and possibly slightly easily duped) people who were unfortunate enough to be born without a penis or outside of Europe. Reason, which always, always reasserts the primacy of the white bourgeois male. Reason, which he is so keen to pretend can exist without some form of positionality, because we always know that when a white bourgeois male uses Reason, he has no positionality. When anyone else uses Reason, it's 'from the perspective of', always located, always partial, never all-seeing like the white man's Reason.
So my first objection is the idea that it is abstract ideals of Reason he wants to protect, as though it automatically follows that this will filter through to real people and real lives. When historically, this hasn't been the case. You need a bit of politics to get Reason moving towards real life justice, and I see a real lack of political urgency in the tone of his argumentation. Acknowledged political urgency, that is. The next bit describes what I perceive as the invisible white male politics behind his fear of religion.
And he gets really enraged about attacks on Reason In a recent TV programme about the charlatanism of alternative medicine (which in some cases I don't really question) he uses quite shocking hyperbole about science being 'under attack' - yes, tissue salts, they're gonna bring the apocalypse! In his assertions (which, if they came from a woman, would be characterised as 'hysterical') you can sense the blind panic of something more than simply argumentation.
I have thought about quite why he gets so enraged, so insecure, about religion. It's because religion, out of all the world's unfairnesses, all the world's idiocies, all its prejudices and attacks on Reason - is the only one that exists at the level of institution, and thereby is an attack on the white bourgeois male in his very own territory. Dawkins hates religion because it is a parliamentary, tax-sustained, institutionalised contradiction of his reality. What a shock, to the white bourgeois male, to have his Reason contradicted, right there in his safety zone! At the level of the institution, which traditionally protects all male interests! While everyone else in the world has their reality contradicted, their interests overridden, the truth of their experience denied by the institution every day (real rape is only real in X conditions, racism isn't real, offensive material is just 'humour', the police are here to protect us, schools are here to help us, can't you just get over it?), the experience of this is a lot more shocking to our poor, coddled, establishment white man.
When I get angry about religion, I get angry because of its direct or indirect impact on my body, my choices, my sexuality, my pay, the very existence of my closest personal relationship, my mother's and my grandmother's entire life, I get angry because I have to march on the streets, hold banners, give my own capital and time to organisations, all the while carrying a rape alarm, in order to have even a hope of maintaining the delicate and partial framework of institutionalised truth that happens to protect my interests against religion, and that because I am fortunate enough to live in a rich European city. Reason has always been denied to me on these counts. Dawkins is just feeling the first cold breeze of prejudice penetrate deep within his white man's palace, and it's largely this that informs his critique of religion.
Enlightenment values have always served the white bourgeois male first and foremost, just like religion. Just like religion, it claims and defines itself by the desire to do good, and only really allows one kind of truth.
********************
And yet I know how this feeds very closely alongside the common critiques offered by religious people.
§ 'Enlightenment values are just another religion'. No, I will never agree with that. It's just another interest that serves the dominant group. This is a mistake based on a misunderstanding of the atheist use of words like 'belief'.
§ 'By denying the possibility of empiricism finding an ultimate truth, aren't you leaving the possibility of God open?' Well, yes. Here I agree with Dawkins; even within the impossibility of ultimate empirical truth, we can still say the possibility of God is vanishingly tiny, enough for daily speech to permit the statement 'there is no God'.
§ 'If you're so against enlightenment values, why are you an atheist?' Good question. I'm hugely ambivalent about the Enlightenment because of its imbedded failure to recognise its own positionality and to admit multiple truths; I largely go with contemporary Enlightenment's anti-religion thrust, because this can be still be shared with non-Enlightenment points of view. Exactly how, I still haven't worked out. I could do with help/critique on that one.
§ 'I believe that God exists, and I'm a feminist, and I feel these things are compatible. There follow natural consequences against your argumentation as a result, because your post presumes an atheist position.' Yes - I accept this. Please critique if you wish. :)
§ There's more, but I've forgotten.
Thanks for the feedback.
close versions of this x-posted to my LJ,
feminist, and another comm.