Andrew Sullivan linked to this from a Jerry Coyne post today.
Dan Dennett talked about interviews with active priests and ministers who are atheists, and also mounted a hilarious attack on theologians like Karen Armstrong, who mouth pious nonsense like, “God is the God behind God.” Dennett calls this kind of language a “deepity”: a statement that has two meanings, one of which is true but superficial, the other which sounds profound but is meaningless. His exemplar of a deepity is the statement “Love is just a word.” True, it’s a word like “cheeseburger,” but the supposed deeper sense is wrong: love is an emotion, a feeling, a condition, and not just a word in the dictionary. He gave several examples of other deepities from academic theologians; when you see these things laid out — ripped from their texts — in a Powerpoint slide, they make you realize how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.
Look, I like Mr. Sullivan and Ms. Armstrong, I like Chris Hedges. I like Mr. Eagleton. I like Robert Wright. I don’t like the New Atheists.
At the same time, there is something that is correct in this critique by Mr. Coyne (whom I don’t like). I, frankly, don’t believe in the God of the philosophers, I believe in the God of the prophets. While the aforementioned liberal intellectual types who are sympathetic to religion use flowery language (which is good!), their message is essentially extremely demeaning to people with traditional religious beliefs.
I also get Sullivan’s point that the new Atheists do not demonstrate an understanding of the complex intellectual traditions of the monotheistic faiths, who each have had their share of extremely smart followers over the years.
I guess all this means that I’m a “fundamentalist”, and so it’s to be expected that my idea of God is closer to the Atheists than to the liberal intellectuals….hmmm…I guess we already knew that…so why is it again that I like people like Armstrong and Hedges who speak against “fundamentalism” as much as the New Atheists do?
