Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 08-02-2004, 07:57 PM

Salon.com has published a review of two books: The God Wars reviews Alister McGrath's "The Twilight of Atheism" and Sam Harris' "The End of Faith"

Quote:

McGrath's book is a masterpiece of condescension masquerading as sober consideration, lucid in a magnanimous, Olympian sort of way, and so ensconced in its authority that it positively reeks of Oxford, where, sure enough, McGrath is a professor of historical theology. Only rarely does he allow himself the kind of biting retort Harris manages to squeeze onto nearly every page -- McGrath knows that sort of thing just makes you sound defensive. But he succumbs to jeering at the other side often enough to make you suspect he's not nearly as confident of his own side's triumph as he wants to appear.

Harris, by contrast, is fiery, a polemicist raging against the "life destroying gibberish" he maintains is threatening humanity's very survival. He can't resist studding the pages of "The End of Faith" with seemingly every withering zinger that's occurred to him in the shower or during bouts of insomnia, from deploring "religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone and unicorns" to asking us to "imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of "Star Wars" or Windows 98." And if you can't imagine that, it's easy to picture the intended readers of this book storing up an assortment of these righteous epithets to fling at pious relatives over the Thanksgiving turkey.

From the reviews that I have read of McGrath's book, he describes the Twilight of communism more than atheism. Harris' book is not out yet.

Yahzi · 08-02-2004, 11:18 PM

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The natural sciences aren't equipped to evaluate claims that are supernatural and finally unknowable.

A nice review, but in the end he finishes with this crap.

Santa Claus is a claim that is supernatural and finally unknowable. How do you suppose the reviewer thinks we should deal with adult Santa Believers?

Plognark · 08-03-2004, 05:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yahzi

Quote:

The natural sciences aren't equipped to evaluate claims that are supernatural and finally unknowable.

A nice review, but in the end he finishes with this crap.

Santa Claus is a claim that is supernatural and finally unknowable. How do you suppose the reviewer thinks we should deal with adult Santa Believers?

You know, sometimes I want to punch people who use that bullshit. It seems like it's wormed it's way into the general western culture that science can't have anything to say on the supernatural, that the surpernatural is "special and separate" somehow, and that makes it all legitimate.

I could go on with a five page tirade on this, but i'll stop now

lpetrich · 08-05-2004, 06:12 PM

Salon now has a lot of letters on this subject.

In one letter:

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... If you listen to modern apologists, you'll hear a lot about the political, psychological or even medical benefits of Christianity or Islam or Judaism, and almost nothing about the intrinsic validity of these faiths. ...

Although that may be a common public position, a lot of apologetic literature does claim factual truth, like the Argument from Design or prophecy fulfillment or whatever.

Another letter was the opposite:

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Alister McGrath need have no fear: God is in no danger of demise -- at least, not anytime in the near future.

God dying from lack of worshippers? That's silly. Worship of a god or gods? A more reasonable proposition, although it ought to be stated in those terms.

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Atheism (at least, a principled philosophy of atheism) is a middle-class techno-luxury.

That's like saying that everybody else has no choice but to be a religion addict. Which is like saying that the religion business is desirable as opium for the people, that it is desirable as a royal lie.

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Here's why: Faith in a Supreme Being provides the kind of sustaining relief from existential anxiety that is difficult to replace.

As opposed to worship of many deities? Polytheist religions have been around for millennia, and de facto polytheism has persisted in the form of veneration of saints. So by the argument from longevity, we ought to worship several deities.

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Basically, only those with access to a solid education in science (that bane of all superstitions) and the leisure time to ponder the irrationalities of faith can afford to totally do without God. (Not that they would, necessarily, but these are basic prerequisites.)

Except that there have been atheists or almost-atheists around long before modern science, like the Greco-Roman Epicureans.

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To wit: All three of the pillars of godless thinking cited by McGrath -- Freud, Marx and Feuerbach -- were solidly middle-class... Godlessness is the sport and province of the idle intellectual.

Except that present-day atheists/agnostics/freethinkers generally do not consider themselves successors of those three gentlemen -- and most of them are not that way because they are bored and have nothing better to do.

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The only other class of person who arrives at atheism is one who can no longer reconcile belief in a benevolent deity with personal experience (say, for example, after having survived the Holocaust)...

So what?

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Even the godless Communists, it turns out, secretly had faith.

That's news to me.

socratoad · 08-05-2004, 06:47 PM

Every once during along period of time I have actually gleaned something of worth from Salon, but usually it is far too full of empty pretentious crap dressed up in a party gown

never been there · 08-29-2004, 08:16 PM

Judging from last week's Economist, Harris's book must be out now.

Publisher's page

www.christianpost.com didn't like it much. Good.

Sounds like fun reading, even if it does just turn out to be a rant.

JohNeo · 08-30-2004, 05:48 PM

salon.com 's claim that science cannot disprove the supernatural is not a claim that the supernatural actually exists, in my opinion. Rather, they know that their interests are served by having an endless debate. It's the same to me as the mass media, who love to present stories that undermine the church (ok by me :wink: ) but turn around and talk about people's "spiritual hunger" or "renewed faith" or that other crap. They (the media writers) simply love to present the sides but will do whatever it takes to keep the horserace going.

JohNeo

ex-preacher · 09-06-2004, 01:11 PM

As of today (September 6) at 3 pm central, Harris' The End of Faith is #10 on amazon, while McGrath's Twilight of Atheism is #8,662.

Toto · 09-06-2004, 01:23 PM

Natalie Angier reviews End of Faith in NYTimes Book Review

Quote:

When I was 8 years old, my family was in a terrible car accident, and my older brother almost died. The next night, as I lay scared and sleepless on my paternal grandmother's living-room couch, she softly explained to me who was to blame. Not my father's Aunt Estelle, a dour, aging wild woman and devout Baptist, who, as usual, was driving recklessly fast. No, the reason Estelle's station wagon flipped over and Joe was thrown out the back window was this: my father had stopped going to church the previous year, and God was very, very angry.

Dear old Grandma June. A compelling lack of evidence for any sort of Higher Power may have steered my mind toward atheism, but she put the heathen in my heart.

It's not often that I see my florid strain of atheism expressed in any document this side of the Seine, but ''The End of Faith'' articulates the dangers and absurdities of organized religion so fiercely and so fearlessly that I felt relieved as I read it, vindicated, almost personally understood. . . .

Emp-JohnIV · 09-06-2004, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plognark

You know, sometimes I want to punch people who use that bullshit. It seems like it's wormed it's way into the general western culture that science can't have anything to say on the supernatural, that the surpernatural is "special and separate" somehow, and that makes it all legitimate.

I could go on with a five page tirade on this, but i'll stop now

Science can evaluate anything that has any relivance to reality, so I think it is accurat to say that science can't have anything to say on the supernatural.

08-29-2004, 08:16 PM	#6
never been there Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Winnipeg, MB Posts: 2,144	You can't defend your imaginary friend... Judging from last week's Economist, Harris's book must be out now. Publisher's page www.christianpost.com didn't like it much. Good. Sounds like fun reading, even if it does just turn out to be a rant.

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08-05-2004, 06:47 PM	#5
socratoad Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canada, deep in the heart of the boreal forest Posts: 4,239	Every once during along period of time I have actually gleaned something of worth from Salon, but usually it is far too full of empty pretentious crap dressed up in a party gown

08-30-2004, 05:48 PM	#7
JohNeo Veteran Member Join Date: May 2004 Location: Dallas-Plano-Irving MSA, Texas Posts: 3,376	salon.com 's claim that science cannot disprove the supernatural is not a claim that the supernatural actually exists, in my opinion. Rather, they know that their interests are served by having an endless debate. It's the same to me as the mass media, who love to present stories that undermine the church (ok by me :wink: ) but turn around and talk about people's "spiritual hunger" or "renewed faith" or that other crap. They (the media writers) simply love to present the sides but will do whatever it takes to keep the horserace going. JohNeo

09-06-2004, 01:11 PM	#8
ex-preacher Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: University of Arkansas Posts: 1,033	As of today (September 6) at 3 pm central, Harris' The End of Faith is #10 on amazon, while McGrath's Twilight of Atheism is #8,662.

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