Category: The Dish

Ben Watts reviews the above short film, Where Do Lilacs Come From, which movingly portrays the perspective of a man with Alzheimer’s:

Writers are often told: “Write what you know”. For Where Do Lilacs Come From, [writer/director Matthew] Thorne did just that, ripping a band-aid off painful true-life events and dramatizing them for the screen. “I had a lot of memories from when I was younger of my dad losing his mother to Alzheimer’s,” Thorne said. “[Those memories] really became the genesis for the film — particularly the pain my dad went through. It was a very strange experience being reintroduced to your Grandmother every day as though she had never met you…You almost start to wonder whether that’s normal. I really wanted to tell a story from her perspective — what it might be like to live in a world where present and past don’t have a clear delineation.” On that front, Thorne excels magnificently, tapping into the dreamlike-quality of memory loss with precision. The extent of Chris’ Alzheimer’s is not apparent until Michael holds up a framed photograph and shows it to his father.

“That’s Mom,” Michael says. “Wasn’t she beautiful?”

“She’s probably in the house,” Chris says.

“No. Mom’s gone now.”

“Oh,” Chris says, pointing to a man in the picture. “Does he know?”

Michael takes a deep breath, trying to keep his composure. “That’s you, Dad.”

More readers keep the conversation going about the merits of New Atheism, sparked by this post. One argues that it’s not Nietzsche who atheists should turn to, but a different German philosopher – Schopenhauer:

All the criticisms leveled against Nietzsche that you have posted are valid.  Nietzsche is too often assigned to atheists because of his famous “God is dead” line.  Nietzsche dismissed the so-called Golden Rule as insipid sentimentalism, as well as Rousseau’s declaration that human empathy proves the goodness of man.  Nietzsche operates outside of what we consider conventional morality, and he makes for an exciting read, but in the end must be rejected by agnostics like myself due to his disdain for the vast majority of humanity, those trapped within slave-morality.

The philosopher I admire is Schopenhauer, especially his notion that compassion is the only good.  Schopenhauer blended Indian philosophy into his belief, that when one exercises their will it leads to suffering.  This is different from Nietzsche’s claim that will should be used to gain power, and that power is only for elite “Supermen” and whatever may be the lot for the rest of humanity does not matter.  (Also note that Nietzsche was one of histories great misogynists, and seemed to truly loathe women.)

The atheist/agnostic would be better served by association with Schopenhauer than Nietzsche.  Nietzsche is to be admired as a writer and a thinker, but not as a guide to New Atheism.

Another rejects the claim from a previous reader that since “the religion believed and practiced by the vast majority of the religious” isn’t the sophisticated theism of, say, David Bentley Hart, the New Atheists have a point:

I’ve never understood why this is the criteria for judging religion’s validity.

Is this criteria applied to anything else? Is philosophy bunk because most people who understand themselves to be “selves” couldn’t tell you the first thing about the cogito?  Are social theories about race to be dismissed because most of us are oblivious to them–or aware of them incorrectly? Of course not. But the sadly all too human behavior and misunderstandings of those that practice religion are regularly pointed to as an excuse to be incurious about its deeper possibilities. Those intellectually curious who want to know about philosophy or race or anything else don’t ask the general populace but turn to the sharpest, most cogent thinkers on the subject. What is so dangerous about doing the same with religion?

Another reader adds that there’s “no reason to be so tentative regarding the case for a secular basis of ethics”:

There are plenty of sophisticated defenses of “secular” ethics. We can look at Derek Parfit’s On What Matters, or Tim Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other, or Christine Korsgaard’s Sources of Normativity, or Michael Huemer’s Ethical Intuitionism, or David Enoch’s Taking Morality Seriously, or dozens of other books. (Indeed, from the survey information we have (as found here) moral realism and atheism are both favored positions among academic philosophers.) What’s always so odd to me is the two-pronged attack made by those who insist on the inadequacy of a secular account of morality: on the one hand, they contend that secular ethics doesn’t address various thorny metaphysical and epistemological issues. And yet, when presented with the existence of such sophisticated works that plainly do address such issues, they dismiss the works as being too obscure and complicated — too academic if you will. Well, you can’t have it both ways. If you want a robust and sophisticated defense of secular morality, then you might need to read something a little more dense than a book about atheism designed to be accessible to a popular audience.

Previous reader responses here. Meanwhile, other readers respond to Michael Robbins’ letter to the Dish:

Michael Robbins’ latest defense of his essay review of Spencer’s book, which you posted, conveniently skips past a colossal point that one of your readers quite cogently articulated in dissent:

The religious intelligentsia want to embrace the vast majority of Christians (who believe nothing like they do), as part of their faith, and at the same time decry atheists who focus on that vast majority as failing to engage “true” Christianity and the deep, meaningful arguments for the faith.

Robbins goes on to prove your reader right when he, like John Haught and David Bentley Hart and other “Sophisticated Theologians”, makes the boring mistake of saying that “religious fundamentalism is a soft target.”  Is it really that soft when almost half of America believes that God created the world in its current form according to Genesis?  Is it really?

Another:

Dammit.  I never said anything, positive or negative, about the Hart quote other than Robbins wanted us to focus on it. More to the point: When Michael Robbins writes “Christians have recognized the allegorical nature of these accounts since the very beginnings of Christianity”, or “it’s not God, at least not God as conceived by a single one of the major theistic traditions on the planet”, he’s ignoring the belief of most Christians in the US and elsewhere.  To be clear, most living Christians do not recognize the allegorical nature of these accounts (a statement easily proven).

When Robbins says, “I had assumed it was obvious that Origen and Augustine would hardly have taken the trouble to deny literalist readings of the Bible if such readings did not exist” he’s faking left and going right. Reading the Bible literally came after the Reformation (a fact Robbins flags in his article “He Is Who Is“).  And while I am insufficiently educated to speak to Origen, I’m happy to go head-to-head on Augustine: $50 for every place Augustine denies literalist readings of the Bible vs. every place Augustine did not.  For example, did Augustine believe in a literal Adam and Eve and original sin?  (Yes.)  Does evolutionary theory destroy both?  (Yes.)  Will I make good money if Robbins takes me up on my offer?  (Yes.)

“Young-earth creationism” is “of course” not based on the Bible.  He seriously said that.  Robbins’ use of the phrase “of course” illustrates a startling ignorance of the mass of Christianity and their scriptural exegesis.  Apparently Ken Ham and Bill Nye’s debate on a 6,000 year-old earth missed the point – nobody watched it.

OK, enough whining, to the heart: Michael Robbins continues to miss the point.

But the New Atheists did not write books that simply attacked creationism. They wrote books that purport to challenge theistic belief as such. They therefore have a responsibility to address the best cases for God, not the dullest.

They wrote books to challenge the theistic belief … of the vast majority of  Christians.  The audience that believes Noah stuffed 9 million unique species on a boat, and the kangaroos hopped from Mount Ararat  to Australia without leaving a single skeleton. That doesn’t require challenging the best cases for God, that requires pointing out that 18 million animals would require a lot of food, produce a lot of waste, and the wolves would probably eat the rabbits.  If the target audience doesn’t care (or understand), the best cases, why should atheists focus on them?

Yes “religious fundamentalism” is a soft target – but it is the important target, and the target on which atheists should focus. If Robbins disagrees, he needs to make the argument that attacking the best cases for God is worth doing, not that it’s the “right” thing to do.

Another piles on:

I’ve found Michael Robbins essay and response both unconvincing. The “New Atheists should be more like Old Atheists,” trope aside, there are other tropes I saw in Robbins’ response. Let’s play spot the trope!

But the New Atheists did not write books that simply attacked creationism. They wrote books that purport to challenge theistic belief as such. They therefore have a responsibility to address the best cases for God, not the dullest. When Dennett asks if super-God created God, and if super-duper-God created super-God, he is simply revealing a lack of acquaintance with the intellectual traditions of the major religions. If you want to argue against something, you have to understand what you’re arguing against. That’s axiomatic.

I would say there are two standard tropes in here. First is the atheists don’t address “the best cases for God.” As far as I can tell atheists always deal with the argument for God being made. Whenever I see that phrase I’m reminded of the practice of goal-post shifting. Often when an atheist addresses a “case for God” they’re told that they haven’t addressed the “best case for God.” Which makes me wonder, why don’t proponents of theism use the “best case for God?” Maybe Robbins should check out Jerry Coyne’s website (not blog) Why Evolution is True; he has addressed various “best cases for God.” Most recently he covered David Bentley Harts’ latest book and found that that “best case for God” was a series of non-sequiturs. X exists therefore God is hardly a convincing argument.

The second I noticed has already been addressed through the Courtier’s Reply. I don’t need to spend several years studying fashion to point out someone’s naked just as I don’t have to spend several years studying theology to point out arguments for theism are not rational.

Another thing, this sentence: “Some atheists believe that their faith in scientific naturalism suffices to disprove the existence of God, for instance.” Speaking of caricatures … I will admit that there may be atheists like this but I know of no atheists who make arguments like that. Science simply eliminates various things from various gods portfolios and finds natural explanations. Germ theory of disease is one example. Do bacteria and viruses disprove God? Of course not, it simply means that God is not needed for people to get sick.

The atheists I know are atheist because they found the argument for theism unconvincing. Personally I’ve always found evidence for theism lacking and the philosophical arguments for theism either irrational or creating an irrelevant deity whose existence is identical to it’s nonexistence. Robbins should check out QualiaSoup’s three–part series on morality without God if he wants to some idea of what he’s arguing against.

[snark] Oh wait, stuff like that can’t exist because of the intellectual shallowness of atheists. [/snark]

I love my family and friends. I help others because it is right. I share what pleasure I have with the people I care about. I celebrate life as best I can and share what joy in life as best I can, because this is all we get. There’s no way I’m going to celebrate life any less just because someone told me I should be sad about the death of God.

David Wheeler notes that seminary graduates are having trouble finding full-time jobs in the clergy:

Working multiple jobs is nothing new to pastors of small, rural congregations. But many of those pastors never went to seminary and never expected to have a full-time ministerial job in the first place. What’s new is the across-the-board increase in bi-vocational ministry in Protestant denominations both large and small, which has effectively shut down one pathway to a stable – if humble – middle-class career.

For example, the Episcopal Church has reported that the retirement rate of its clergy exceeds the ordination rate by 43 percent. And last year, an article from an official publication of the Presbyterian Church wondered if full-time pastors are becoming an “endangered species.” This trend prompted the Religion News Service to report that, in the future, clergy should expect to earn their livings from “secular” jobs. Pastors who don’t want to go that route might have to ask friends and relatives for money, or perhaps serve more than one congregation.

“[W]hatever the nature of a faith in a supernatural being, or beings, and whatever its unprovable postulates,” muses William Boyd, “I am convinced that what makes our species unique … is that we know we are trapped in time, caught briefly between these two eternities of darkness, the prenatal darkness and the posthumous one”:

“The prison of time is spherical and without exits,” Nabokov says. What to do in the face of this universal, inescapable penal servitude? My own feeling – and this again is what makes us human – is that we all yearn for one thing. Just as it’s hard-wired into our consciousness that we live between two eternities of darkness, so we search for some factor to alleviate and compensate for that brutal reality.

And the compensation we seek, I believe, is love. We want to love and we want to be loved, every single one of us. As the song says: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn/Is just to love and be loved in return.” That’s what makes our sojourn in the time-prison bearable – more than bearable: redemptive – life-enhancing, time-evading. If you’re lucky enough to experience that emotion then you’ll have savoured the best, the ultimate, that the human predicament can offer.

“[W]hen we are young and literary, we often experience things in the present with a nostalgia-in-advance, but we seldom guess what we will truly prize years from now. I always placed a high value on friendship, but even I had no way of guessing back then that it was more fun to get drunk with a friend than with a lover. Love is a source of anxiety until it is a source of boredom; only friendship feeds the spirit. Love raises great expectations in us that it never satisfies; the hopes based on friendship are milder and in the present, and they exist only because they have already been rewarded. Love is a script about just a few repeated themes we have a hard time following, though we make every effort to conform to its tone. Friendship is a permis de sejour that enables us to go anywhere and do anything exactly as our whims dictate,” – Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and ’70s.

Kimberly Winston takes note of a growing movement to examine the Great War through the lens of religious history:

“You can’t understand the war fully without investigating the religious dimensions of the war,” said Jonathan Ebel, an associate professor of religion at the University of Illinois whose Faith in the Fight: The American Soldier in the Great War has just been issued in paperback. … Ebel draws a line from the “masculine Christianity” of the early 20th century (evangelist Billy Sunday‘s enormously popular revivals often included military recruiting tents) to the way combatants and support workers thought of the war. Soldiers scribbled lines of Scripture on their gas masks, marked their calendars with a cross for each day they survived combat, and opened the pages of the Stars and Stripes military newspaper to read poems comparing them to the heroes of the Old Testament. “The culture of pre-war America gave America images, ideas, and beliefs perfectly tailored to war,” he writes.

That is echoed on a global stage in The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade by Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religion at Baylor University. The book pulls the lens back from individual Americans to highlight the religious imagery, rhetoric, and symbolism used by all sides in the war to further their goals. Several countries — especially Russia and Germany — saw the war as a fulfillment of their unique destinies as the kingdom of God. But Europe did not have room for so many countries with the same aspiration. “You can toss a coin as to which country to blame, but their two clashing visions made war inevitable,” Jenkins said. “If you do not understand the messianic and apocalyptic imagery used by all sides, and how wide-ranging those images were among all classes, all groups, all nations, you cannot hope to understand the war.”

(Photo of WWI Belgian solder’s crucifix by Flickr user Smabs Sputzer, who captions it: “It belonged to my Grandad and he wore it in the trenches during the First World War”)

In a review of Laurel Braitman’s Animal Madness, Joshua Rothman considers how human habits affect the minds of our pets:

When it comes to animals like [the “mad” elephant] Tip, “Animal Madness” has a straightforward message: Braitman will convince you that exotic animals shouldn’t be kept in zoos. … But what about pets? For them, it’s our busyness that’s the cage. Dogs and cats enjoy being around people—they’ve been bred to like us—but we’re spending less and less time at home. “Most urban and suburban dogs are only encouraged to be themselves for a small fraction of the day,” Braitman writes. Come sunset, “they flood the sidewalks around my house with their pent-up frustrations, pissing and smelling and dragging their people along behind them like water-skiers,” enjoying the human company that they crave. All is well, but then, after perhaps half an hour, “it’s back to the house for dinner, some petting, maybe some television with the humans, and then bed.”

Maybe, Braitman concludes, we should “stop leading the sorts of lives that cause large numbers of our pets to end up on psychopharmaceuticals.” We should spend less time on the Web and at work, and more time outside or at play with our animals. There is, in other words, a self-interested reason to care about their mental lives. In them, we can see “our own unhealthy habits reflected back at us.”

Previous Dish on the subject here and here.

(Photo by Christopher Michel)

Brandon Ambrosino interviews Nick Spencer, author of Atheists: The Origin of the Species, about how unbelief in the divine has changed from Nietzsche to Dawkins:

BA: Modern atheists seem of a very different variety than their forebears. For instance, Richard Dawkins, whom you critique, is very different than, say, Nietzsche. How did we get from one to the other?

NS: You’re right: Nietzsche and Richard Dawkins don’t have a great deal in common. I guess I’d say, we didn’t get from one to another, because there are different strands of atheisms. I talk about atheisms (plural) in the book. At one point, the statement “There is no God” is acceptable as it is in an academic seminar. But if you wanted to deny the existence of God in public — in the late 19th-century Europe, for example — you’d have to say, “There is no god and therefore … ” There’d have to be some implications of your nonbelief. Atheists over the years have differed according to what those implications are. And the result is that atheists, I argue, differ in their “doctrines,” if you like, of the nonexistence of God and its implications for human affairs.

Now Nietzsche had one particular, very abrasive, and, I think, painfully honest approach to that question which has spawned in the 20th-century certain nihilistic forms of atheism that are more usually associated with continental philosophy. Dawkins does it right within that tradition, and therefore, is a move on from Nietzsche. He occupies a very different atheistic position (arguably several atheistic traditions) and that’s why there is clear blue water between Nietzsche’s and his. But it wasn’t as if the former ever led to the latter. They were all, if you like, different branches of the same tree.

Recent Dish on Nietzsche here and here.