On another note, I thought it was interesting to see Hitchens make the distinction between theist, deist, and pantheist. I don’t recall him making such a fine distinction before.

I also liked the moderators thought that if anyone asks us if we believe in God we should first ask what they mean by God before answering.

I can’t call myself an atheist because I don’t know which god I don’t believe in.

If anything, the rabbi failed his faith the moment he crossed into Hitch’s world. Tsk, tsk.

From what I’ve seen of him, Hitchens is very much a “soundbite atheist.”

But being snappy isn’t the same thing as being correct.

There are much stronger arguments for God among the academic theologians than what his opponents have presented, and the strongest tack for his opponents is to say “But that’s not the God I believe in.” The problem is that the God that Hitchens is battling is precisely the God that most people believe in, despite what academics have formulated in the ivory tower.

That’s an incredibly cartoonish position to take. You’d have to be an utter ideologue to make it with a straight face.

It’s also a sad fact that the aggressor in a debate will ALWAYS have the advantage, even if he is wrong.

He says “religion poisons everything” which is not to say that it is “the source of all evil”, the appeal to an ultimately evil or good source being a uniquely religious fallacy.

I said nothing of “strong belief” but you did say (and misrepresent ) that Hitch thinks religion is the source of all evil … or at least the most potent source of evil. Yes, that does sound clownish … and religious … and it’s not what Hitchens would say.

What I think, Seth, is that you have either not read Hitchen’s book or somehow read your own ideas into it.

Neoconservativism really, really, really isn’t the religious right. If you think it is, you’re buying into the rhetoric of Limbaugh and Coulter that try to present “conservativism” as one cohesive philosophy. Really, the Republican party is a coalition of diverse interests–it’s just been kept in good order by strong leadership for a decade or so (which has been fraying lately, btw). Yes, many Republicans have bought this rhetoric, too, and they honestly think that Jesus, oil corporations, and campaign finance have something to do with each other. But again, we’re talking about an AM-talk listening largely uneducated rank-and-file that buys the pundits’ rhetoric hook, line and sinker.

Bush really, really ain’t a theocrat. He just talks like one sometimes because it gives the Religious Right a joygasm and harnesses them for votes and popular support like nothing ever has.

I could have easily used the so-called “War on Terror” as an example.

If black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-and-evil thinking is purely a product of religion, then half the vocal atheists I’ve encountered online are “religious.” You find this among any group that believes passionately in an ideal. I’ve seen it in the Goth culture at high-school. In fact, I’ve seen it in just about any adolescent culture. The terrors of the French Revolution were over purely secular, and originally admirable ideals.

I haven’t read Hitchens’ book. I have read a lot about him online. And I have also listened to a lecture he gave. From that lecture, I felt fairly safe saying that he views black-and-white thinking as a uniquely religious failing.

Which really is a ridiculous position. Sorry, but it is.

Whenever Hitchens finds something that doesn’t have an obviously religious hook, he reads on into it. Thus the excesses of Stalin’s regime were only non-religious ON THE SURFACE. In reality, the cult of personality practiced under Stalin was actually a religion.

But as I said earlier, if you are willing to do this little piece of mental gymnastics, you can call ANYTHING “religion.” In Hitchens’ case, religion becomes a synonym for pathological behavior. Which makes his thesis a lot less useful.

Black and white reasoning is a human tendancy which religion significantly magnifies and enflames … neither I nor Hitch has called it “purely a product of religion” — but by doing so you falsely (whether intentional or not) accuse dear Hitch of a type of lunacy which religion itself promotes … the appeal to absolutes … which was my point from the beginning.

So, the “ridiculous position” that you keep retuning to is, I think, your own bias coloring Hitchen’s arguement … another of my original points.

And on the topic of black and white thinking … it seems that your apparent insistence that ideas such as American exceptionalism must have a clear and absolute religious foundation else “anything can be called religion” and Hitch’s arguement becomes pointless and comical … this is somewhat a black and white thought pattern on your part, I believe.

He then follows up his challenge by asking if anyone can think of a “wicked statement or action directly attributable to religious faith”. I think we can all remember a few such actions from history which were predominantly motivated by religion (I would also add ideology).

Granted that this looks at two extremes, but his point is that religion is at best unnecessary and at worst enables evil. In my mind, it’s still an open question whether or not religion (stripped of all the things that can be replicated secularly) is a net benefit to most individuals and to society in general.

Can’t say the same for kids that aren’t his though.

Fair enough, because that’s generally the most retarded argument ever, and it makes me a little concernd about what’s going on inside these peoples’ heads. If, as they claim, fear of hell is the only thing that’s keeping them from going on a murderous rampage..?

If we truly believe that humans are evil by nature … incapable of goodness without god … then we have set the stage by our expectations for both the lowest behavior and the easiest delusion of redemption.

The biggest problem with the New Atheists is that they’re honestly combatting a straw man of religion.

Anyway, I disagree most heartily that religion as an independent force has much of a poisoning effect at all. The question of whether or not there’s a God aside (and I kind of don;t think there is), I think religion is too intimately bound into culture and society to say whether or not its effect is independently poisonous. Simply put, no culture or society is religion-free (and those that are have a political ideology mixed in that reaches religious or semireligious status). You’ve absolutely got no control group.

Religion is a neutral socio-cultural structure that serves an enormous number of functions. Some of them we may fairly label negative (for example, religion has almost univerally been used to stabilize and maintain status-quo power structures that we’re not comfortable with, and those hegemony-enabling functions we may fairly take issue with). But the problem with labeling religion poisonous is that it implies that things would be actually better without religion, and I’m not convinced that’s the case.

First, there’s no way to know that, since it’s impossible to get a clear picture of what a fully a-religious society would really look like because we have never seen such a thing (we can imagine, but we’d work with a strong possibility that our speculative picture would be way off, to the tune of a utopian fantasy or a hellish nightmare, depending on the presumptions we bring to the table, or we might just plain get it wrong); it’s too intimately bound up in everything we know about human existence for us to know what life and society would be like without it.

Second, like I said, Hitchens has heavy assumptions in there about the functions of religion. Like I said in above, Hitchens’s argument basically tries to say that religion’s only positive function is providing people with moral and ethical maxims. Not only is that a painfully and childishly simplistic view of religion, an intensely complex and multifaceted socio-cultural phenomenon, but it is further laden with unreasonable assumptions (one of which I pointed out above–just ebcause it’s possible to come up with moral/ethical maxims sans religion (of course it is!) doesn’t mean that it’s likely or that people would be as likely to follow them.

Third, it assumes that religion’s only effects are negative, or that the engative aspects outweigh the positive. I know that you and Hitchens think the negative outweighs the positive, btu let’s face it, neither one of you are scholars of religious studies. Both of you are coming to the table with an agenda that colors your viewpoint strongly. There’s a whole academic field that studies religion (not theology, which looks at religion from the inside, but religious studies, which looks at it from the outside), there’s a large body of work that has already been done. What I’m saying is that I’m skeptical of any “objective” approach to evaluating religion that isn’t grounded in rigorous academics. Richard Dawkins is a biologist. Sam Harris has a bachelor’s in philosophy, is working on a PhD in neuroscience, and is otherwise self-taught. Hitchens is a journalist. I realize that their backgrounds don’t invalidate their claims, but their backgrounds combined with the things they talk about do lead me to infer that they’re not well-versed in the academic field. In other words, better-educated, better-trained, and more well-informed people have been going the rounds about religion for quite some time and have a hell of a lot to say about it (and a hell of a lot that is extremely negative and critical), and the New Atheists have arrogantly ignored it all. As if they’re the first ones to wake up and realize that they can look at religion from the outside and draw conclusions about it without being believers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_studies
There are approaches, there are methodologies, there are academic journals, there are books that don’t get sold at Borders because only RelStud professors and grad students ever read them. There’s a whole world of scholarship out there. At least take a look.

My brother’s a Rel Stud grad student. As he explains it, most of the academy is extremely critical of religion. However, virtually none of them take Dawkins, Hitchens, or Harris even a little bit seriously, except as a part of a cultural phenomenon to be studied. The New Atheists are lay pundits writing for lay audiences, and they honestly are in way over their heads. That haven’t actually got a clue wtf they’re talking about.

I think the best way to regard the New Atheists is as popularizers of atheism, not as experts in the field despite what they themselves may or may not believe. Their arguments may be relatively crude, but they are arrayed against the kind of unthinking religion which causes the most trouble in the world.

I think the New Atheists also suffer because they, as Sam Harris has pointed out, apply skepticism and rationality too bluntly to attack all religion instead of focusing on the doctrines or sects that are most troublesome.

My anxiety about the New Atheists is actually that they have the potential to polarize fence-sitting Christians into throwing their lot in with the fundamentalists by painting too black-and-white a field of options. To Sam Harris, liberation theologians are just secular humanists that haven’t put their cards on the table; but I’m not convinced that the inside struggle isn’t better than the “assault from without” that believers feel so justified in styling as attacks on their faith and God’s kingdom. Even if we imagine the world of religious thought in terms of good (equality, justice, peace) versus evil (exploitation, coercion, psychological abuse), I believe the greatest *practical* power belongs to the liberal theologian, who can turn the accepted religious authority (lets say the Bible) into something more just and humanistic via charisma, rhetoric, and interpretation– and actually stand a chance of swaying the masses while he/she is at it. This latter observation is just my own argument, which tends to be pragmatist.

I will try to think about Psychology and Sociology books. However, William Paden’s “Interpreting the Sacred” is a very good (and accessible) primer on the advantages and disadvantages of different ways of looking at religion, including a chapter on Psych and one on criticisms of religion. The very nature of his book betrays the fact that he believes in a multi-angled pluralistic approach to religion, but I can’t say that I disagree with him on that.

And no shit Sam, Hitch, Dawkins et al aren’t theologians. That argument from theological ignorance is a classic. As if anyone in theology has a clue or that there’s some universal standard or body of accepted learning among theologians that disqualifies any other to speak contrary-wise to the subject.

So long as theology remains synonymous for making shit up and then mentally masturbating on it ad nauseam … and I really don’t see this ever changing else it would cease being theology … then any 14 year-old boy with a backwater education will be able to speak authoritatively on the subject.

I would argue that C.S. Lewis did for Christian apologetics, the same thing Hitchens is doing for atheist apologetics. He made it accessible to the Joe on the street. Populist writing is a time-honored tradition.

Raticas and dpc, thanks for the recommendations. I’ll look into them further. Have you heard of Eight Theories of Religion? It seems to be well recommended on Amazon.

mel, I also get annoyed when people turn aside these arguments with “well that’s not what everyone believes”. That’s an important point, but it’s also important to remember that someone (probably more than one) believes it. I try to seed everything I say with qualifiers (e.g. “some Christians”) just so I don’t have to fight that battle every time I say something. I’m willing to work with natural allies among the more liberal believers to discredit fundamentalism, so I don’t want them to feel lumped in with the fundamentalists, like Raticas said.

I don’t mind the gentle reminder to not speak too broadly, but did I really?

I don’t think you were speaking too broadly, but I think people like to make sure you know that they don’t believe what you describe. (I’m not trying to analyze your motives, Kullervo, just speaking in general.) When I’m not careful, people think that since I’m talking to them I must be targeting their personal beliefs rather than talking about beliefs in general. I guess I can see the reason for the confusion, but it’s a frustrating exercise nonetheless.

And, yes, I think that version of atonement theology is an atrocious fundamentalism which poisons our self-image.

I’m just calling people out on pure ignorance.

It’s a tough cookie indeed.

If you don’t want it to be all or nothing with the apologists, don’t make it all or nothing for yourselves.

Are you the 14-year old? Religious Studies isn’t Theology in the same way that Astonomy isn’t aliens. The problem is that most of these new atheists are *presupposing* that they are right and everyone else wrong when it comes to questions like how many Right-wing nut-job Christian fundamentalists are actually out there. The difference is that actual religious studies scholars trouble themselves to do the math

Wade Clark Roof has done some really excellent work on religious demographics out of California (Berkely?). Rather than dividing people by denomination, he divides them by their approach to religion into 5 categories. Fundamentalists are only one of these groups; they are numerous and growing of course, but hardly eclipse all other approaches to religiosity. Most scholars of religion consider Atheism a religion as well, since its has all the psychological, social, and propositional characteristics of any other religion.

There are some basic mismatches with Atheism, however; lack of any kind of cohesive ritual is first and foremost. What it boils down to is what terms you are using to define religion. If your operating definition is a group of people who share absolutist beliefs in unsubstantiatable truth-claims, for example, then Atheism would fall into that category (I admit that would be a rather pessimistic, and therefore somewhat useless operating definition for religion). That’s sort of the gist of Paden’s book: the terms on which you engage religion are largely going to define what your conclusions will be. If you approach religion from an anthropological perspective (Geertzian anthro focuses on ritual), for example, then Confucianism is a religion– but so is football. Confucianism is also an ethical system, but it has little to say about gods and the universe other than proscribing a preferable social order. So if you decided to define religion as a cosmological system, then you would have to exclude Confucianism and include Atheism. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though there is no absolutely accepted definition for religion, it still falls to scholars of religion to work with the ambiguous systems on the edges, and Atheism is one of them.

Are you an alien?

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

I’m not too clear on both your and Kullervo’s attempt to set me straight on Theology vs Religious Studies. At what point did I get them confused? At what point did I claim they were the same thing? And what exactly is your point in raising the distinction as a major point of rebuttal?

“Fundamentalists are only one of these groups; they are numerous and growing of course, but hardly eclipse all other approaches to religiosity. “

In other words,” we’re not the crazy ones … they are … and though we want nothing to do with them, we’ll defend their right to publicly inflict their lunacy ’cause deep down we know that they’re the same as us but just slightly more so.” Not to put words in you mouth but simply to make a point.

It’s true … gasp! … The four horsemen of the anti-apocalypse are after more than just the so-called fundies and there’s a method to what you perceive as a madness … it’s called seeing pot and kettle and calling-out the black without regard for degree of blackness.

“Atheists are people … er … religionists too.”

Finally, the ultimate “when all else fails” argument: if you can’t beat ‘em, Borg ‘em … resistance is futile. You do this at the comic peril of the very definition of “true religion” you seek to defend. But whatever.

Now Harris and Dawkins like to say something that sound similar but is not: “everyone is an atheist with respect to Zeus (and/or all other gods/dogmas/”fundamentalisms” that they reject)” which is to say that we all know what it is to reject gods, but most just fail to take that last step which fully defines Atheism.

Why? Because they embrace the fundamentalist belief that their god is different from all the rest … that their god is true. And so the story continues …

Theology is the study of God. Your criticism of it is arguably extremely apt. However, nobody here is saying anything about theology. Nobody here is saying Hitchens et al should learn more about theology. You don’t need to know theology to talk about religion, you need to know theology to be priest or a minister. You learn theology in a seminary. A high degree in theology is a Doctor of Divinity.

Religious Studies is the academic study of religions the way anthropologist study culture, economists study the economy, and sociologists study groups of people. Religious studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the social sciences

When Hitchens says religion poisons everything he’s speaking from a position of total ignorance. He might be right in theory, but he flat-out doesn;t know enough about religion and its complex effect on society, culture, human thought, social structures, and individual psychology to be able to have a truly informed opinion on the subject. It would be like me trying to argue macroeconomics. Lots of laypeople understand economics in a superficial way, but there are nuances and complexities and issues for consideration that are mostly the realm of the academy. They can be known by laypeople but they usually aren’t. My argument might be right, by random good luck, but the chances are way higher that it would be simplistic, underinformed, and fail to take into consideration most of what people who study economics know about it. And while I could probably dazzle laypeople with my plain-talk approach and daring ideas, it would probably be obvious to anyone who knew even a little bit more about economics than I do that I was talking out my ass.

Every comment you make indicates that you assume that Religious Studies is somehow a defense of religion or religious people, or that it is somehow a defense of metaphysical or religious ideas. That’s not Religious Studies, that’s apologetics. Apologetics doesn’t belong in the social sciences, it belongs in church.

The point is, Hitchens et al don’t really know enough about religion as an object of academic study to properly criticize it. They’re arrogantly assuming that they’re the only ones to whom it has ever occured to look at religion objectively from the outside, and thus they are ignoring at least a century’s worth of principled academic study. There are already multiple generations of scholars, journals, symposia, debate, discussion, theories, studies, and books that have put religion as a social and cultural institution under the microscope. Not from a position of theological defense, but from a position of neutral academic study.

There is a body of accepted learning when it comes to Religious Studies, the same as there is a body of accepted learning when it comes to anthropology. The New Atheists ignore it, and wind up speaking in sweeping generalities about what religion is and what its effects are–good and bad–without realizing that generations of scholars have been talking about this stuff already. To a professor of religious studies, they just look stupid.

Once more for the road, Mel, because you seem to be wanting to have a fight with someone who isn;t in this discussion: Religious Studies isn;t theology. Nobody but you is talking about theology here. Nobody here is professing any religious belief at all. Nobody but you is implying otherwise.

Folks, so you study religion but don’t believe any of it. I get it. Just wanted to remind you however, that we first went off the rails when someone claimed that the Neo-atheists (whatever that means) “don’t know jack shit about religion” and so aren’t qualified to comment.

I disagree and that’s what this argument has been about as far as I’m concerned. But you can keep on actin’ as if you’re just being picked upon and misunderstood ’cause it seems to me that this is really your best and only argument.

IOW — learn all you want about religion and then don’t believe any of it … what a fuckin’ blackhole. But do the rest of us a favor and stop acting as if your time spent in this pursuit somehow qualifies you as experts and anyone else as “arrogant”. When it comes to religion, we’re all in the same shit-hole my friends.
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Jonathan, I’m sorry about helping drive this thread into the tank, but I do appreciate your even hand and particularly your inside jab at the “true order of prayer”. I’d almost forgotten about that one.

I haven’t read it but I think the “8 theories” book is basically cut out of the same bolt of cloth as Paden; it’s probably a good a starting place as any other for looking at all the ways that religion had been dealt with.

Mel,

I see that there may have been a misunderstanding on my part regarding theology v. religious studies. Having forgotten about my comment re: the social reforming power of a good theologian (like King or Ghandi), I was baffled as to why you kept bringing theology up. My bad.

However, your arguments are pathetic. You have relied entirely on a combination of emotional outburst and attempts at witty jabbing that usually obscures what exactly it is you are trying to say. What I am telling you is that you are a bad communicator. This is not to say that you are wrong about Atheism– by all means, you know a lot more about the inside of the movement than I do– but that your means of expressing it are so far from the rational clarity that New Atheism usually imagines to be at odds with religion (emotional appeal, sarcasm, sweeping generalizations and personal attacks) that you shouldn’t be surprised when we don’t buckle under your comebacks.

All due apologies to Blake and company for this post, which is sort of a flame. I can accept being banned if you think that’s appropriate.

Yes, there’s more to communication and argument than making people feel warm and fuzzy or numbing their minds with polite and sanitary double-talk … but then, I suspect you fail to see this and such is the larger reason you take issue with Hitch.