I have been hearing from colleagues that their congregants are reading Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens--the writers I think of as "evangelical" atheists. Dawkins and Dennet are scientists, Harris is a "graduate student in neuroscience" but his book takes on history, and Hitchens is a journalist. For these writers, whose books are selling apace, religion is a wholly negative force.
We progressive types are tempted to respond to their critiques by saying that the God they don’t believe in, we don’t believe in either. Their argument with religion holds for traditional religion but not for progressive religion like our own. In other words, our version of religion is "Dawkins-proof."
Unfortunately, I don't think it is quite that simple. All four seem to be saying the religion is unsafe at any speed. Those of us who keep the enterprise going through our updating and reinterpreting are just perpetuating a bad idea along with some bad institutions. So, what do we have to say in response to that?
I plan to write a long entry on this question in response to the arguments from science.I leave it to others to take on the historical arguments. In the meantime, the reviews of Dawkin's, God Delusion , in Harpers, New York Times, and London Review of Books are a good place to begin.
Harpers:
http://darwiniana.com/2006/10/23/marilynne-robinson-on-dawkins/
New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Holt.t.html?ex=1319169600&en=d9a0ba69b41f32df&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
London Review of Books:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/print/eagl01_.html
1 comment:
Nancy, you may want to take a look at blog postings by Stanley Fish on the New York Times Blog over the past month and the many hundreds of responses he has attracted. Lots of folks have very strong feelings they are eager to share. (I posted as "The Wise Bard", from the name of my blog).
There have also been some interesting postings on related topics on a religion panel blog run by The Washington Post. The "Jewish" postings have struck me as a bit "halash" thus far.
By and large, most of the folks who want to argue against religion (and G!d) on these discussion boards have very un-nuanced, Sunday school conceptions of both in ind. I've seen rather little grappling with less supernaturalist conceptions thus far. That also goes for most of the reviews of the "evangelical atheist" books (nice turn of phrase) I've seen in the popular media. I can't speak for the books themselves (which I haven't read, and am not sure that I will), but the shorter form essays by the book authors also tilt at windmills that are not my own.
I look forward to your further thoughts...
Alan Jay Weisbard
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