A few thoughts on my reactionary response to reactionary atheism
I just finished God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Now, I knew this was a book I would disagree with, I know that Hitchens' glib approach to religion gets even my goat sometimes. But he's an entertaining fellow and I'd hardly be a person I'd want to talk to if I didn't keep up with the other side.
That said, the book was far worse-reasoned than I expected. Which isn't to say that Hitchens' commentary wasn't trenchant or germane, but he proved nine ways from Sunday that the Bible and Koran weren't inerrant texts written by God while only devoting one chapter to the "immorality" of religion as a whole.
Perhaps this criticism is needed. Perhaps I am a liberal effete Protestant far too immersed in modern and post-modern theology. Frankly, I don't think the fact that the Bible was obviously written no earlier than 200 years after Jesus' death spoils the whole Christian project. I find the discrepancies, historical errors, and mistakes in the text an interesting record of the struggle to determine and codify what Christianity is. The more I study the Bible, religious philosophy, theology, what have you, the deeper my faith becomes.
So perhaps I'm the one who is condesending to Hitchens when I feel him a bit slow on the uptake to be (or seem) so shocked that the Bible was written by people! And sometimes, even contains those people's agendas!
And while I generally love his rolickingly mocking tone, I found his glib dismissal of Christian (and other religious, but I was obviously more familiar with the Christian ones) thinkers. In his discussions of how religion contradicted secular culture, did he ever think that religious people have pondered the same question? Did he think to quote a Niebuhr? In discussing seperating religion from its cultural grounding, did he ever think to quote a Schleiermacher? This is a man who doesn't translate his Latin and who will quote Shakespeare and Kipling in the same breathless paragraph. If you're going to be a pedant, at least you could find another Christian scholar to quote besides Bart Ehrman.
This is what annoys me the most about what I see as the modern atheist "movement" represented in Hitchens and Dawkins. They have the dual assumptions that the religious are all a bit dumb and that the history of ideas is teological. Certainly Acquinas, Athanasius and the like didn't have the knowledge we do, but it's safe to say that both of them were smarter than I'll ever be. The adequacy of their ideas can be challenged, certainly, but it's insulting to any intelligent person to say that they represented the "childhood of our race" as Hitchens says. It's as silly to say that new ideas should be trusted just because they're new as to say that religion is right just because it's traditional.
Should society be pluralistic and largely secular? Absolutely. The excesses of organized religion should disgust those who genuinely seek a truth behind the visible world (and those who seek truth in general). But try though he might, Hitchens' attempt to turn religion into a straw man just paints him as an armchair philosopher and ranting kook on the level of an end of the world prophet.
That said, the book was far worse-reasoned than I expected. Which isn't to say that Hitchens' commentary wasn't trenchant or germane, but he proved nine ways from Sunday that the Bible and Koran weren't inerrant texts written by God while only devoting one chapter to the "immorality" of religion as a whole.
Perhaps this criticism is needed. Perhaps I am a liberal effete Protestant far too immersed in modern and post-modern theology. Frankly, I don't think the fact that the Bible was obviously written no earlier than 200 years after Jesus' death spoils the whole Christian project. I find the discrepancies, historical errors, and mistakes in the text an interesting record of the struggle to determine and codify what Christianity is. The more I study the Bible, religious philosophy, theology, what have you, the deeper my faith becomes.
So perhaps I'm the one who is condesending to Hitchens when I feel him a bit slow on the uptake to be (or seem) so shocked that the Bible was written by people! And sometimes, even contains those people's agendas!
And while I generally love his rolickingly mocking tone, I found his glib dismissal of Christian (and other religious, but I was obviously more familiar with the Christian ones) thinkers. In his discussions of how religion contradicted secular culture, did he ever think that religious people have pondered the same question? Did he think to quote a Niebuhr? In discussing seperating religion from its cultural grounding, did he ever think to quote a Schleiermacher? This is a man who doesn't translate his Latin and who will quote Shakespeare and Kipling in the same breathless paragraph. If you're going to be a pedant, at least you could find another Christian scholar to quote besides Bart Ehrman.
This is what annoys me the most about what I see as the modern atheist "movement" represented in Hitchens and Dawkins. They have the dual assumptions that the religious are all a bit dumb and that the history of ideas is teological. Certainly Acquinas, Athanasius and the like didn't have the knowledge we do, but it's safe to say that both of them were smarter than I'll ever be. The adequacy of their ideas can be challenged, certainly, but it's insulting to any intelligent person to say that they represented the "childhood of our race" as Hitchens says. It's as silly to say that new ideas should be trusted just because they're new as to say that religion is right just because it's traditional.
Should society be pluralistic and largely secular? Absolutely. The excesses of organized religion should disgust those who genuinely seek a truth behind the visible world (and those who seek truth in general). But try though he might, Hitchens' attempt to turn religion into a straw man just paints him as an armchair philosopher and ranting kook on the level of an end of the world prophet.