Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute. There’s a schism alright, and I seem to find myself on the unfashionable side of it - Michael Ruse
The question: Is there an atheist schism?
As a professional philosopher my first question naturally is: “What or who is an atheist?” If you mean someone who absolutely and utterly does not believe there is any God or meaning then I doubt there are many in this group. Richard Dawkins denies being such a person. If you mean someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn’t think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night, then I guess a lot of us are atheists. But there is certainly a split, a schism, in our ranks. I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists, generally today known as the “new atheists”, loathe and detest my thinking….
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buzz
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thabet
Rough and ready view of the Enlightenment and religion:
1. French Enlightenment: Eliminate or replace religion.
2. English Enlightenment: Politically control religion.
3. Scottish Enlightenment: Ignore or dismiss religion.
4. German Enlightenment: Rehabilitate religion.
This is a very simplistic view (I can see many weaknesses), put up largely to provoke discussion.
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aziz
Ali Eteraz discusses the concept of the Near Far.
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thabet
Even while I can sympathise with the author is trying to achieve, I have to say this is a terrible article on ’secularism in Islam’.
Full of anachronisms, unnecessary attempts to shoehorn one history into another, bizarre use and abuse of terminology, the article misses one crucial fact: the Mu’tazilites of the period the author discusses were just as involved in the political intrigues of their day as their theological opponents.
(Another point is that terms like ‘freedom’ or ‘liberalism’ are not uncontested in Western traditions as the author claims.)
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razib, murtad fitri
thabet said:
Even the most well known Sunni practioneers of kalam were ‘Iranian’ or ‘Persian’ (I will side step that for now).this fact is interesting in and of itself. after all, though khosrow I did sponsor the pagan philosophers who were being marginalizedin the byzantine empire by justinian the great, philosophy was fundamentally a feature of greek culture west of india, pagan or christian. even groups of philosophical bent like the sabians seem to have derived it from a hellenistic influence.
a secondary issue is that due to the weak knowledge of history the intellectual production of the 8th-9th century is conceived by many as an arab muslim project. the reality is that there were many streams and participants. many non-arabs, persians, aramaic speakers as well as greeks, etc.and many non-muslims, christians, jews, sabians etc.
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razib, murtad fitri
reading some translations of zhu xi and also tariq ramadan’s latest book. there is a qualitative difference between the “reasoning” by these sorts of thinkers, who bring to the table particular cultural presuppositions (though ramadan might try to get around this by asserting the universalism of islam, that is only convincing to muslims), and something like euclid’s elements, which nakedly transparent and clear. for me, how i identify science vs. non-science is to look how closely the style resembles work of neo-confucian bureaucrats, rabbis commenting on the talmud, or islamic thinkers who elucidate a particular legal issue. more science resembles halakhic exegesis than scientists might want to admit….
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thabet
Terry Eagleton’s new book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, is getting attention from Stanley Fish; John Quiggin and John Holbo at Crooked Timber (although Holbo’s is more a comment on Fish’s views); and Andrew O’Hehir writing at Salon.
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thabet
As a rule of thumb, any non-German who refers to “Das Kapital” hasn‘t read it.
Something similar can be said of non-philosophers or non-historians who start talking about ‘Enlightenment values’.
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thabet
Talking of John Rawls, there’s an article in the Times Literary Supplement on his religious beliefs.
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Lawrence of Arabia
A pair of today’s ongoing conversations concerning the law, its basis and intelligibility, has reminded me a conversation that took place over at eteraz.org back in 2007. A rather lengthy recapitulation of that conversation can be found here, along with some background and a few editorial comments from myself.
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thabet
“[M]odern nation-states which masquerade as embodiments of community are always to be resisted. The modern nation-state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about to, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf; it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.” [Alasdair Macintyre]
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thabet
In Our Time’s latest episode looks at the the movement and transformation of ancient Greek knowledge into Arabic during the 9th-century (listen to the podcast).
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thabet
– Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. and Potter, J., (1995). Death and furniture: The rhetoric, politics and theology of bottom line arguments against relativism, History of the Human Sciences, 8, 25-49.
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aasem
Weekend Contention: There is an irreducible element of religion and science in philosophy.
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willow
So I’m reading Lawrence Durrell’s orientalist masterwork The Alexandria Quartet, which, if you haven’t read it, is excellent. Durrell is certainly guilty of a few of Said’s more serious pet peeves–under much discussion, as we’ve seen, now that Orientalism is entering its fourth decade–but overall the picture he paints is complex and thoughtful. (He focuses on Coptic rather than Muslim culture, it should be noted, and has a very astute handle on how the British complicated the relationship between the two.)
When I read, I dog-ear pages that I think contain really amazing phrases/insights. This was one I ran across today:
“To have a grasp of the language was nothing, he now realized; for Leila exposed the hollowness of the knowledge when pitted against understanding.”
My take: so, so true. A concise summary of what fells most western expats/travelers in the Middle East: you arrive thinking you know something, discover you know nothing, and retreat into racism because it’s the only thing you have in your intellectual arsenal that makes sense.
Thoughts?
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willow
Assertion: “The more highly public life is organized, the lower does its morality sink.” –EM Forster
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thabet
Traditionalism — the intricacies of life have a purpose.
Modernism — the intricacies of life obscure the purpose.
Postmodernism — the intricacies of life have no purpose. -
thabet
Are you a frequentist or a Bayesian?
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thabet
Contentions:
1. Individualism can be traced to the Abrahamic commitment to monotheism, judgement and humanity’s distinction from the world.2. Christianity is ideologically unable to accept the existence of other religions. Islam, however, is able to do this.
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thabet
