Quote for the Day: Principled Unbelief and Moral Adventure
From David Bentley Hart, my hero:
Simply said, we have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible. Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. The logical and imaginative grammars of belief, which still informed the thinking of earlier generations of atheists and skeptics, are no longer there. In their place, there is now—where questions of the divine, the supernatural, or the religious are concerned—only a kind of habitual intellectual listlessness.
You may read the article in context here: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/05/gods-and-gopniks
And, come to think of it, if you have the free time to read my humble journal, you have the time to read FIRST THINGS, which is somewhat higher than I on the Great Scale of Eternal Being.
Mr. Hart goes on to comment on a critic of his:
Excuse the sigh of vexation; I cannot help it. Setting aside the nonsense about desperately minute explanations, which cannot possibly be relevant to any argument of mine, the God described in my book is the creator of everything, who communicates with all persons in a constant and general way, and with many individuals in an episodic and special way. Whatever originality I might claim for certain aspects of my argument, its metaphysical content is entirely and ecstatically derivative: pure “classical theism,” as found in the Cappadocians, Augustine, Denys, Thomas Aquinas, Ibn Sina, Mulla Sadra, Ibn Arabi, Shankara, Ramanuja, Philo, Moses Maimonides . . . well, basically, just about every significant theistic philosopher in human history. (Not to get too recherché here, but one can find most of it in the Roman Catholic catechism.)
Then again, reading the book would not necessarily have helped Gopnik much. Anyone who imagines that the propositions “God is the source of all existence” and “God creates everything” are antitheses, or that divine transcendence involves God simply standing “outside everything,” or that defining God as the Absolute precludes defining him as the Unmoved Mover, enjoys an understanding of philosophical tradition that is something less than luxuriant. Fair enough. He is in another line of work, and probably should have avoided these issues altogether. The real problem with his article is not its dialectical deficiencies so much as its casual inanities. The dazzling moment of truth comes when Gopnik claims that what unbelievers “really have now” is
a monopoly on legitimate forms of knowledge about the natural world. They have this monopoly for the same reason that computer manufacturers have an edge over crystal-ball makers. . . . We know that men were not invented . . .; that the earth is not the center of the universe . . .; and that, in the billions of years of the universe’s existence, there is no evidence of a single miraculous intercession with the laws of nature. We need not imagine that there’s no Heaven; we know that there is none, and we will search for angels forever in vain.
Did Gopnik bother to read what he was writing there? I ask only because it is so colossally silly. If my dog were to utter such words, I should be deeply disappointed in my dog’s powers of reasoning. If my salad at lunch were suddenly to deliver itself of such an opinion, my only thought would be “What a very stupid salad.” Before all else, there is the preposterous temerity of the proprietary claim; it is like some fugitive from a local asylum appearing at the door to tell you that “all this realm” is his inalienable feudal appanage and that you must evacuate the premises forthwith. Precisely how does materialism (which is just a metaphysical postulate, of extremely dubious logical coherence) entail exclusive ownership of scientific knowledge? Does Gopnik think he can assert rights here denied to Galileo, Kepler, and Newton? Or to Arthur Eddington, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac, Anthony Zee, John Barrow, Freeman Dyson, Owen Gingerich, John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, Stephen Barr, Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris, and (yes) Albert Einstein?
The tiny, thwarted blastema of a thought that seems to be lurking in Gopnik’s words is the notion that we have only lately discovered that God cannot be found as a discrete physical object or force within the manifold of nature, and that this is somehow a staggering blow to “that hypothesis”—though, curiously enough, Augustine or Philo or Ramanuja (and so on) could have told him as much: God is not a natural phenomenon. Is it really so difficult to grasp that the classical concept of God has always occupied a logical space that cannot be approached from the necessarily limited perspective of natural science?
Hm. If I may indulge in a peevish observation: I certainly hope all the concerned Christians eager to upbraid me for my lack of charity when I am caught ‘Speaking Truth to Stupid’ will note that Christians more accomplished both in theology and letters than am I share the same weakness for Odium theologicum or, in my case, Odium Rectitudum Politicum.
No, I am kidding. Wrath is one of my besetting sins, and I wish, nay, I welcome to be chided for it when I step over the line.
(If any Latin scholar will tell me how correctly to say ‘Political Correctness’ in the Roman tongue, I would be grateful.)
Final quote:
Principled unbelief was once a philosophical passion and moral adventure, with which it was worthwhile to contend.
I feel your pain, brother. I spent over an hour yesterday writing ‘answers’ to a silly flatulence of words penned as if by some shrill yet vain and gossipy schoolgirl wanting to make sure I was not invited to the prom after-party because I was a Christian, and, you know, godbotherers are SOOO last season!
There was not a single relevant comment, not a single argument, not a syllogism, no logic, no witnesses, no evidence, no argument. It was all ad hominem. That is the only arrow in the quiver of minds too dull to address the concepts being discussed. Instead of answering anything I said, the schoolgirls giggle and snicker about my ugly attire. Apparently I put on brown socks with black shoes.
There was nothing to contend against: as if to draw a mighty sword to contend with giants, but meeting nothing but the mists.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
