I love this time of year. The wearying heat of Summer will soon give way to the crisp, cool air of Fall. Because this is Southern California, I can’t hope for real whether, but I can certainly pray for a bit of rain here and there.Most important of all, school is back in. I have always loved the return to school. But, oddly enough, not because of school. I usually looked forward to going back to school because it meant seeing old friends or gaining some other pleasure that had absolutely nothing to do with the day-to-day of receiving my education. And so, because I did not love school for its own sake, it wouldn’t take long for me to grow tired of getting up early every morning and having to slave away at homework every night (a task that, because I loathed it so much, was rarely ever completed on time).
This rather rapid decent into academic apathy has been the case as recently as my Sophomore year of College. I have found in the last year or so, however, that this sentiment has completely reversed. After completing my first year (two semesters) at Biola University, I find myself genuinely excited about the prospect of school itself. Attending classes, listening to lectures, discussing new ideas with my peers, and, yes, reading lots of long-and-often-hard-to-follow philosophy books! Every thought leaves me feeling an eager anticipation for tomorrow (unless of course tomorrow happens to be a Friday or Saturday…can you believe that??!! I actually dread the weekends!!).
Whatever else education may be, it is most certainly the impartation of truth. Whether learning about the fundamental principles of Chemistry and Physics, or about the rules of Logic, or about the events of History, education is about knowledge and truth. But this realization must be cautioned against. For in one of the more curious ironies of fallen man, it seems almost universally the case that knowledge walks hand-in-hand with hubris. In a strange sort of way, truth becomes the antithesis of love. After all, if I possess knowledge that my friend from high school does not, am I not in some way just a little bit better than he is? After a moment’s reflection, I’m willing to bet you’d find that this thought hits a little closer to home than you’d like it to.
Can you think of a time when you were talking with someone about politics, history, or religion? These topics are unique from many others in that they are simultaneously objects of intensive study at the graduate and post-graduate levels of academia, and yet they are just as vulgar, topics that every human being must deal with on a daily basis. Because of this, it will often be the case that a simple person will make some simple statement like, “This country has been such-and-such since the days of the civil war.” The person may not mean anything serious by this simple comment, but his slightly-more-educated-in-history/philosophy friend will immediately feel a kind of disdain for the “shallow” picture of history that this person has. And, being the good friend that he is, he will take it upon himself to beat this poor person over the head with his own ignorance of the world. Now, it is all well and good to lovingly correct someone you know who has a mistaken view about something (in a country full of public-school educated people who get 85% of their outlook on life from the media, you’re bound to know quite a few people with mistaken views), but that’s not what I’m cautioning against. The caution is simply not to think yourself so much better that your uneducated friend. If knowledge is power, as the saying goes, it is quite easy for knowledge to kindle a powerful pride, a vicious vanity in those who have it. And these feelings will inevitably lead them to an almost bitter loathing of those who don’t.
Here we encounter another irony. On the one hand, the Christian should not face this dilemma. After all, a child-like faith in the simple truths of the Gospel lead to salvation. For the Christian, you don’t need a PhD to understand the fundamental truths of the universe. In fact, it is the Christian’s humble admission of his own finitude that recognizes that even someone with a PhD in philosophy or physics probably doesn’t really understand the universe half as well as he thinks he does. Compare this to the secular world. By and large, the secular man believes himself to know everything. Darwin got everything right when he naturalistically explained the origin of all things, Nietzsche and Freud got everything right when they explained away morality and religion, and Marx got everything right when he explained the deterministic economic forces the have shaped all of human history and when he outlined how mankind could reach its Utopian future. The secular man sits on his pedestal, the center of his own universe, and scoffs at every generation that has come before him, along with all their quaint traditions. With such an attitude it’s easy to see why secular academics have no love for their uneducated brethren.
On the other hand, this danger is just as potent for the Christian. Because the truths of Scripture are so important, so sacred, and so valuable we are tempted to think much of ourselves when we have studied them in great depth. One can even call to mind stories of impetuous young seminary students who return to their home church for the first time after being away and start picking fights with their pastor…in front of the congregation! Or we could imagine the conversations this young seminary student might have with his atheist friends. I don’t know about you, but I find it disturbingly easy to imagine an entirely one-sided conversation in which the young man repeatedly beats his friends over the head with cosmological arguments and moral arguments and the mounting evidence for intelligence design, all the while thinking quite a lot of himself for having defended the integrity of God to these blasphemers. Needless to say, his atheist friends are none too keen to pay attention to his arguments after a while, and his hubris has now cost him any chance of being a good witness by his character.
And that last part is the most troublesome of all. Christianity’s greatest apologetic has never been intellectual arguments for the existence of God, but the “living arguments” of loving, gracious Christian people. In the grand scheme of history, winning hearts and minds to Christ has never depended on Anselm’s Ontological Argument half as much as it has depended on offering a loving embrace or a helpful hand to those whom the “elites” of the culture have shunned. That is true today as much as it ever has been. As the intellectual elites at the secular universities grow ever more in their disdain for the common man, Christians must work hard to marry their knowledge with the love that we have in Christ, and give that love to those common folk who need it most.
But one final caution. None of the thoughts I’m expressing here are original, and there have been Christians who have responded to this problem by abandoning the pursuit of knowledge and clinging to an emotional, subjective “faith.” This is no better an answer. Love without truth to guide it is just as bad as truth without love to humble it. And while the majority of the common folk may need love more than sophisticated arguments, there can be no denying that it is the intellectual elites who are running this country, and they most certainly need strong, rational, persuasive arguments from Christians if we have any hope of winning back our culture and saving the West from the brink of destruction.
With all these things in mind, may God grant us the wisdom to temper our growing knowledge with Christian charity, as we continue to be a light in this dark world.
“Darwin got everything right when he naturalistically explained the origin of all things, Nietzsche and Freud got everything right when they explained away morality and religion, and Marx got everything right when he explained the deterministic economic forces the have shaped all of human history and when he outlined how mankind could reach its Utopian future.”
Oh! No! Must resist hubris… ahhh…….
I am sorry, this is just too absurd of a comment to escape criticism (being that it was meant sarcastically).
Tell me: did any of these thinkers claim to have “got it right”? Who said so? Your terminology is useless because I know for a fact that Freud, Darwin, and Nietzsche did not claim to “get it right” in the sense of having an absolute truth, so really they cannot be speaking with any more authority than you are when you make any proposition – and I won’t want to speak anything about Marx until I’ve read Capital. All I know about his claims is that he wanted to turn Hegel upside down (and that’s because I’ve read the Economic and Philosophic Mauscripts of 1844). But you wouldn’t know that because it appears that you only know summaries of these thinkers (wikipedia? I don’t know!)
Oh gosh! Okay, okay. You will have to excuse my rudeness, but I can’t help but feel like you do among those “vulgar” people you speak of who get their knowledge from the media (I am thankful that I did not watch Transformers and attempt to get a moral interpretation out of it). What do you expect me to do, as an Atheist? Control my hubris? Maybe you can simply silence this comment, and exercise your right to censorship?
Perhaps you are only using them as a rhetorical device? For emphasis? Well, that won’t work either, because these thinkers are too important historically (and in terms of what you understand by the word “true”) to be used simply as gloss on your primary intention.
“By and large, the secular man believes himself to know everything.”
Good god! Not only is the secular woman (myself! =P) nowhere to be found here, but it is the sloppiest generalization I have ever heard from a college student in philosophy. I don’t expect everything that one writes to be perfectly precise, but I encourage you not to write so topically and not so often if you are willing to leave such gross misrepresentations unchecked.
“With such an attitude it’s easy to see why secular academics have no love for their uneducated brethren.”
I apologize once again: I am holding my tongue here, but you will notice that I am not so mean to MG. That is for a reason, and I would think very hard about what that reason is. I will only offer a few suggestions in parenthesis (Go to a real university? Maybe? Just sit in on a few lectures? Get your mind out of your bubble of Paradise in La Brea?).
“And that last part is the most troublesome of all. Christianity’s greatest apologetic has never been intellectual arguments for the existence of God, but the “living arguments” of loving, gracious Christian people. In the grand scheme of history, winning hearts and minds to Christ has never depended on Anselm’s Ontological Argument half as much as it has depended on offering a loving embrace or a helpful hand to those whom the “elites” of the culture have shunned.”
Finally, you have gotten to the real essence of Christianity. I wish you would have said this before you completely destroyed your credibility! You speak of Hubris – do you not recognize it in yourself? Have you heard of Peter Singer? Is he one of your “elites”? Which elites are you talking about, and have you met any of them in person? I’m sure you must have, because you surely wouldn’t want your information to be gleaned from the media, would you? I have not read one secular book that called for shunning of others; I have not even read one that called for intellectual apathy. Perhaps you have read this intention in the words of an author that I have missed – elaborate this for me.
(Though I would like to note that the theological arguments don’t work merely because they are dry and intellectual, but also because they are not true. Even the “common folk” (talk about demeaning?) can smell the stink of their artifice.
Actually, let me talk a little bit about your language. By making a distinction between the elites and the common people, you are going further than most secular academics ever would. You are doing more violence to your fellow man by continuing to make a distinction between people where there does not need to be one.
You have created a dichotomy inherited by YOUR experience with others and your personal feelings of hubris. You said so yourself, though you wished to say that “everyone has had this experience”. I grow angry, I make insults, I ignore and shake my head – does this imply there is a categorical difference between me and the people I do not like? Not at all. It is an emotional tool to group a whole people who fall under this category of “uneducated” into a mass Other that no longer needs to be taken into account except in passing. “Extend your love to the uneducated other”. If that is not hubris, I don’t know what is.
I was attempting to parody what you were implicitly saying, but you seemed to have said it yourself: “Christians must work hard to marry their knowledge with the love that we have in Christ, and give that love to those common folk who need it most.”
I am an atheist, and some people say I am fiery and combative when I argue with others, but I would never utter something so degrading as what you have just said.
I have eaten some carrots and gotten the anger out of my system: let me speak more plainly.
Why is there such antagonism between myself and yourself? You antagonism was explicitly against me, even before you have read anything that I have written. Your antagonism prompted my anger and we became enemies. I have said some things that I may never be able to take back – perhaps you will have resentment against me forever. But I am not resentful towards you – I only think that you are wrong.
Here is how I understand things: I believe that my anger arises out of an awe that someone with obvious intelligence and who has good intentions can make such base claims as you have made. I would believe that your anger is more emotional because you have evidently not thought seriously about any important secular theorist. Indeed, from your closing points, it appears that you really do believe that you are fighting to save the world from evil.
I believe that my anger arises because you claim to know truth, but are obviously emotionally driven and not very well read by contemporary philosophical standards (which mine are not equal to, but which I admit to having some dependence on).
Have you ever read Richard Rorty? Wittgenstein? Derrida? Butler? Heidegger? Adorno? Russell? Even some “christians” – Kierkegaard? Hegel? Kant? Have you read any philosophical book outside of class? How closely have you read Aristotle, or the Stoics? I use this approach because I know you respect knowledge, and you do not believe that truth can be had by simply thinking hard enough about it on your own.
MG said it was a choice about what one chose to invest one’s time in. This is a kind way of saying he does not think my suggestions are worth reading. I am more charitable – I offer to read any book you would like me to read, so long as you promise to read a book of my choosing.
I will admit it – I am out to convert Christians. Why? I do not know for sure. I would like to say for the sake of truth, but I would also like to say for the sake of freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of the body (they need not be separate).
Our age is dark. But it is not secularism that is doing it. It is an economic, psychological, and sociological problem. That is the problem. The solutions are varied. Religion may be a solution for some. For a great many, for a minority, for none. All these are possibilities, depending on how we examine them.
I have nothing to live for except truth. I have faced the idea that I will die and nothing will be left of me. There is nothing sad in it any longer – I have learned to appreciate the life that exists as we know it. Perhaps it is because I do not understand suffering. You may call me ignorant in that account. But you will be implicitly making a valuation claim, a claim that the reason for why one should believe in Christianity is because it will help people from their suffering. Then it is a pragmatic institution – it has nothing to do with truth.
You shall take one or the other. Truth, or effectiveness. I do not know how effective atheism would be on a wide scale. Call me ignorant on that part as well. I only claim its truth. Either show me your truth, or show me your love, or show me a good reason why they are both manifest in Christianity (your only reason in this blog was “it is important”).
Show me, and I will look.
Jackie, thanks for the thoughtful comment.
First of all (and this is perhaps the biggest point I have to make, since it hopefully clears up a confusion that no doubt incited most of your comment), I wasn’t making any claim about the atheist authors I mentioned, nor about their own thoughts or intent. My mock comment was for those who read them and think they’ve got the whole universe figured out. The added hubris comes for them (as opposed to religious believers) simply because they believe their naturalistic explanations to be sufficient to explain all that exists. So while there is room for modification and new discoveries for the atheist thinker, such changes are only minor in the grand scheme, and they’re still left with the hubris of believing that they’ve completely unlocked the mysteries of ultimate reality.
Now notice, while a religious person may make claims to knowing certain truths about ultimate reality, I know very few (if any) who claim to understand all of reality exhaustively. Such a claim would be the epitome of hubris. But this is exactly the claim the atheist makes by virtue of accepting that there is no ultimate reality beyond the physical. I readily admit, of course, that agnostics would not fall so neatly into this problem, so perhaps my polemic against the “secular” man could be narrowed a bit more, to avoid confusion.
My second point (which is actually very important as well) is regarding your claim that I undermined my own credibility by being “degrading” toward the uneducated people. First of all, the sentence you quoted was merely an extension of my earlier comment, so I was referring to the “common folk” that the elites of our culture have “shunned”, as I put it. Furthermore, I meant nothing degrading by using the term common folk, I didn’t even mean it to refer solely to uneducated people, but to everyone who isn’t an academic elite (which would include myself). Finally, you said that my making a distinction between educated and uneducated people was violence, something that no secular academic would do, and a distinction that doesn’t even exist. I find this the most curious thing you said. Not only does nearly everyone in our society bemoan the lack of education the average American receives, but surely you realize that their is a huge distinction between a high school drop out and a someone with a PhD? And to say so is not to degrade the high school drop out. After all, nowhere was I making a moral judgment about one’s education level. Nowhere did I commend the educated person and chastise the uneducated person. Not to mention that the person with the PhD could be a horrible, immoral person, while the high school drop out could be of outstanding moral quality. IN FACT…that’s precisely what I was getting at. You mentioned Peter Singer. There’s a wonderful example of a man with a PhD who has a seriously defective morality (if you can even call it that). Accuse me of hubris and yell at me for attacking a man I’ve never met if you like, we can have the abortion debate some other time. On the other hand, most Christians have never graduated college. And that’s the whole point of my post, in a slightly more condensed form. Is it good to be educated? Yes. Is it wrong to be uneducated? To a certain extent, no, not at all. And my caution was to those who are educated and think themselves so much better than those who are not.
It doesn’t take much for me to defend my claim. If you’re a secular atheist, it is really “morally” wrong to be uneducated. There are no simple gospel truths that can be handed down by an existing and credible authority that are sufficient to save you. The proletariats’ lack of education is one of the biggest contributing factors to their exploitation, after all. And with the modern secular focus on the hard sciences as the most important discipline, an uneducated person has little value to society because they will have little chance of aiding or contributing to scientific progress. And let’s not forget the most important aspect of all this: religion. You’d be hard pressed to deny that, generally, the atheist or “free” thinker doesn’t blame the prominence of religion to a lack of education, to at least some extent. Your own comments betray your feelings on the matter, that religion only gains hold when it is used as a sort of practical “pain killer.” It is those who have read and understood great academic works of great atheist thinkers that can break free of religion’s hold.
Whether you yourself, or even most atheists you know, are filled with hubris and a loathing of your uneducated countrymen (which I am by no means claiming that you are), I trust you can at least see why this would be the general tenor of secular thinking, and the logical conclusion thereof.
Lastly, I want to apologize. While I stand by most of what I said, I take very seriously your charge that I myself may be succumb to hubris and that I may have offended people with my language. I believe I suffer from chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome.
I assure you that I have carried on much more civilized dialog with atheist friends in the past, but in posts such as these I tend to use more rhetoric than is healthy I think. I should also point out that there is a very fine line between being an academic and pointing out the problems that have occurred because the masses are largely uneducated, and being an academic who actually loathes those people for being uneducated. I would like to think that I’m doing the former, and that my whole big point about loving uneducated people rather than looking down on them would have absolved me from charges that I was doing the latter, but I guess I was wrong.
In any event, I must admit that I had Richard Dawkins in my mind the whole time I was writing this post, and I’ll gladly concede to the charge that Dr. Dawkins isn’t representative of all secular academics.
Again, thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful comment, it’s very appreciated.
Hello again David…
I am very much more calmed after a good night’s rest and I appreciate very much this response. I expected as much from you, and I know we are all susceptible to a little bit of “rhetoric” from time to time.
I still disagree with most of what you said, but hopefully I can make good critical comments without the added venom.
First I would like to make a point that is “stylistic”, if you will. You have appeared to respond to everything I said, and either I must have been mistaken about every point that I had, or you have been mistaken in interpreting what I was saying. There are different ways in which disagreement can occur – with the Peter Singer example, for instance, that requires a different debate because we have different conceptions of morality (I think he is a good example because he donates to charities and urges others to do the same, in his books and lectures, while you think he is immmoral because he kills babies).
Actually, let me ask you a question – a friend of mine saw him give a lecture at UCLA and thought him very inspiriing. I have a friend who has read much of Practical Ethics and respects that book very much. I also have read parts of Writings on an Ethical Life. What experience do you have reading Singer, since you say that you have not seen him in person?
But back to the forms of disagreement. Some of it is caused by the different beliefs we hold, which must be taken up in different debates to see whether those beliefs are worthy of being held. But there is another more subtle type of disagreement where I accuse you of doing something, and you do not claim to have actually done it.
The two options here are either that I was mistaken about what you were “really” saying, or I was saying something about your text that grew out of your control, and I saw that you were saying something that you did not “intend” to say, but nontheless said purposely.
How is this paradox possible?
“First of all (and this is perhaps the biggest point I have to make, since it hopefully clears up a confusion that no doubt incited most of your comment), I wasn’t making any claim about the atheist authors I mentioned, nor about their own thoughts or intent. My mock comment was for those who read them and think they’ve got the whole universe figured out. The added hubris comes for them (as opposed to religious believers) simply because they believe their naturalistic explanations to be sufficient to explain all that exists. So while there is room for modification and new discoveries for the atheist thinker, such changes are only minor in the grand scheme, and they’re still left with the hubris of believing that they’ve completely unlocked the mysteries of ultimate reality.”
But, then, you WERE making a claim about the author’s “thoughts or intent”. You say you were not, but no matter what you have said this is what you have done. I do not know of anyone who reads these thinkers in particular and believes they have got something figured out (I can’t even bring myself to use your terminology because it is so bloated and does not fit well issuing from my hand). Theorists look for patterns in human life and try to describe them better than those who have gone before them. There are no substantive claims to have “unlocked” something, which is the best word I can use with the terminology that you give. It seems that we still may be in metaphor, “figuring out the whole universe” is incredibly vague and it is not a healthy criticism to make because no one with a sharp mind ever believes himself to have done this. No one.
You claim to not have said anything about what these theorists think, but only those who read them. That would, by relation, not speak very well of the theorists. Tell me, what specific examples do you have of someone who has made such grand claims?
“this is exactly the claim the atheist makes by virtue of accepting that there is no ultimate reality beyond the physical.”
This is interesting, because you say that one almost necessarily makes this claim if one is an atheist. This presupposes your actually being right. Let me rephrase your phrase: “This is exactly the claim that christians make by virtue of accepting that there is a supernatural realm beyond the reality we know”. Now it appears that YOU are committing hubris.
But that is not fair either. The truth is that niether the people you attack nor yourself are committing hubris by virtue of the fact that you are both making the same claims against one another. They both cancel each other out, so to speak. Niether one knows that she or he is right for sure, so to accuse the other of being arrogant is already to presuppose the truth of one’s own position.
“My second point (which is actually very important as well) is regarding your claim that I undermined my own credibility by being “degrading” toward the uneducated people”
Yes, my claim cannot evaded by explaining what you “meant” to say. I am saying that the text implies this by your language. In following paragraph you talk about what is meant by “common person” and point out facts about education levels and say other things that I or anyone else knows very well. You say things that are obviously true in the attempt to show that you were making a rational claim that really had nothing insidious about it. Yes there IS a difference between someone with a Phd and someone without one, I would never dispute this.
But there is also a difference between a latino person and a white person. I could cite examples about how many more white or asian people go to college than latin and hispanic people, but somehow that wouldn’t be very seemly, would it? I could cite all the examples of how culturally, artistically, socially, economically, etc. they are different and you would be as accepting of these answers as I have been of your answers as to the differences between Phds and people who have not had the opportunity to get an education, but then, you did not even use that language. You said “uneducated” and “common folk”. Does this not imply that they are essentially different, or as such because of a choice of their own? No, of course you would not say that, but it is implied. There is somethig inherently one-dimensional about the way you are speaking, no matter the “real” differences that you choose to cite.
No matter what you “meant” to say, this was an injunction for you to clean up your language because it is overgeneralizing and on the whole, unfair. You cannot separate your thoughts or feelings from your language. A high school drop out would read your text a lot differently than I would. I would only implore you, if you really want to be democratic, to make your text accessible to all (and this, I hope I don’t have to point it out, means not that you make the text easier by using simple words or ideas, but that you do not use marginalizing language and speak to a very specific audience. I never speak to atheists, but I see many christians feeling that it is all right to speak within a closed circle, without thinking that anyone from the “outside”, and especially not a “common person” will read their writing).
“It doesn’t take much for me to defend my claim. If you’re a secular atheist, it is really “morally” wrong to be uneducated. There are no simple gospel truths that can be handed down by an existing and credible authority that are sufficient to save you.”
I don’t understand how you can be so brave to make claims about what “I” need to believe as a secular atheist. I don’t believe that education is a choice for most people. Do you not realize that there are dire social circumstances that are the cause of both lack of education and poverty? Who among us has really said that they did not want to go to school and remain ignorant? Willful ignorance, I may be perturbed at. I have never met anyone who has said that, so there is no moral claim to be made there.
Tell me again, where are all these straw men you keep coming up with?
“The proletariats’ lack of education is one of the biggest contributing factors to their exploitation”
I won’t even respond to this blatant display of your ignorance of current strains of Marxist thought. Please read some of Herbert Marcuse and Charles Taylor.
“And with the modern secular focus on the hard sciences as the most important discipline, an uneducated person has little value to society because they will have little chance of aiding or contributing to scientific progress.”
Not in philosophy, the focus has not been on the hard sciences and niether in literature or sociology or gender studies or history…. these are all very secular fields and I ask you (once again) to tell me specifically who has focused so intently on the hard sciences? And even if this were somehow true, your claim does not make sense because the sciences are meant to serve the people who do not have the education to move themselves up out of poverty. Through science we can bring comfort to more people than before by supplying them with innovative solutions in medicine and convenience (i.e. for a disabled person or someone who has suffered from an injury). The uneducated person WOULD have value for the hard sciences because they are the people that science is intending to serve.
“And let’s not forget the most important aspect of all this: religion. You’d be hard pressed to deny that, generally, the atheist or “free” thinker doesn’t blame the prominence of religion to a lack of education, to at least some extent. Your own comments betray your feelings on the matter, that religion only gains hold when it is used as a sort of practical “pain killer.” It is those who have read and understood great academic works of great atheist thinkers that can break free of religion’s hold.
Whether you yourself, or even most atheists you know, are filled with hubris and a loathing of your uneducated countrymen (which I am by no means claiming that you are), I trust you can at least see why this would be the general tenor of secular thinking, and the logical conclusion thereof.”
It is always hard for me to believe that christians are willing to speak of christianity in terms of a “pain killer”, that is, they are sophisticated enough (here I am doing violence, no matter what I meant to say, i.e. I can bring in facts about how many christians do not question their lifestyle, but no matter what I say I am still doing violence, as you did violence) to understand the concept of an idea being useful to themselves only for the sake of providing an existential balm. I mean, that is really interesting. I wish I could live forever. But I do not believe christianiy is true, and so I am condemned to a finite life. You not only believe that you can live forever, but that your belief is true. What a wonderful place to be!
I do think that if one studied the history of Western philosophy (with primary texts, not just summaries, and which would take a good five or ten years to do a thorough job) I would be surprised if they were still religious. But that is all. You mistake someone like myself thinking that lack of education is a bad thing versus thinking that the uneducated person is a bad person. I have never blamed anyone for not having an education, and from my experience at college (UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berekely, UC Irvine, UC Riverside – I have not attended all these schools, but have been there in various capacities) I have found secular thinkers to be very, very concenred and thoughtful people, especially as regards the solution to human suffering. I have not heard one professor exhibit any kind of great arrogance. I think it is a very myopic person that would accuse so many people who they have no contact with of being arrogant and uncaring as regards uneducated people, simply because of one person like Richard Dawkins. Once again, that may not be what you “meant” (“I’ll gladly concede to the charge that Dr. Dawkins isn’t representative of all secular academics”) but then, you shouldn’t have written your post in such a banal manner as to give the impression that you are really so myopic?
“I trust you can at least see why this would be the general tenor of secular thinking, and the logical conclusion thereof.”
Every point that you made gave reasons why an atheist might dislike an educated person, but there is absolutely no causal (nor logical) relation here. It may be that every athiest thinks that the social forces that have caused lack of education to be pervasive are bad. That is a more logical conclusion (and fits in better with the evidence) than your claim, unless you can show otherwise.
I have read half of The God Delusion and watched some videos of Dawkins online. He does not seem like a bad man, and in fact, from what he says in his book, has great hopes that society will be one day better and that people will be more happy and free without religion (and without other forms of oppression as well). I am interested in what sorts of things have made you think that he is…. well, whatever you think he is.
I take it that you have not read any of the authors I mentioned, which is very surprising to me if you are a philosophy student. Would you like to take up my challenge of us choosing a book for one another to read? I think, even if it did not change either of our views, it would be a good foray into a field we are unfamiliar with.
=) thank you for your quick reply and for being so generous though I may have been so harsh!
(One more thing — there is no “abortion debate”. There is the debate of whether one should take the life of something that doesn’t understand what death means, but only pain. In anthropology, it has been well noted that young females have an instinct to kill their baby when we feel we cannot take care of it. This has been observed in different primates, including humans.
Would I kill something that has the potential to be a loving extension of myself?
Why would I, unless I had a good reason for it? Now that we are a more advanced society, why would we not give the baby up for adoption? There are many reasons. “Behind every choice is a story” and “If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?” are two of the better bumper stickers I have seen. Yes, one does not have to keep the child, but why is there an obligation under the law to have the child in order to give it up? Why can’t the baby just be killed? Why has the concept of “human life” been so fetishized?
Why should a mother have the shame of going through a pregnancy and then having to give up the baby? Have there not been times when, after having the child, she no longer wishes to give it up? Even if it is disastrous for her financial situation? Why are we making laws that make it more difficult for people already in the situation that they would have to choose to keep their baby or not? Are these people not, statistically, more likely to be uneducated and in poverty? I am not even touching the question of rape, which already only affects women.
What about gender discrimination? Should we consider the fact that since women are the ones burdened with childbirth already, we should be burdened with laws about what we can do with that bodily function? Why do we value the life of an infant with no personal connections besides that of father and mother (and perhaps only mother) more than we do the self-interest of the mother with a complicated life situation? None of us is in a simple life situation in which death or a pregnancy would not dramatically affect those around us, except the simplicity of a baby, perhaps.
etc.
I am very glad that I am a young woman, so you may not take this debate so lightly as you may do among male peers).
Wow, thanks for the quick response. There’s nothing worse than sitting around for days waiting for someone to respond to your comments.
First, just a few points that I can’t help but continue to argue about (that’s just me, it’s probably a personality defect). (Oh, and just so you know, I’m pretty much going to concede defeat on this debate, if anything because I’ve ended up agreeing with most of what you’ve said).
Most of my comments are based on personal experience. I’ve talked with people who downright abhor religious people and having nothing good to say about them. Further, the disdain for uneducated people that I have encountered (which, I’ll grant, isn’t always explicit) is usually based on some notion similar to what I was describing. Darwin and Freud already figured everything out, a long time ago, and therefore religious people just ought to know the truth (even if they haven’t read either Darwin or Freud or the others) simply because their ideas are a part of the cultural consciousness.
Now, once again, this says nothing about whether Darwin or Freud explicitly claimed to have “figured out” all the mysteries of the universe. It is merely the observation that some people think they have. Now, I admit that the majority of these people I have talked to have been on the internet (which is usually not a good place to have a deep, civilized conversation). This also leads us to two possible conclusions. Either my sampling of atheists has not been representative, or yours has not. Since you yourself are an atheist, I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that my sampling has been the marginal one. I also hasten to mention that I have atheist friends, who are by and large very sweet people. But because they are friends (and not just internet acquaintances), I have a much better chance to interact with them in the long term, and I have found that their disdain for religious people is not on the surface, but bubbles up during discussion. Again, this may not be true of you or even most people, so I’m not going to pursue it dogmatically.
I also realize now that this applies more to the “common” atheist than it does to the super-educated atheist, so there’s another flaw in my rhetoric.
I must pursue the point I made about atheist hubris. Do you not see the massive difference between making claims about features of ultimate reality and making a claim to understand ultimate reality completely? By accepting that nothing exists beyond the physical, rather than simply being agnostic about it, you are (despite what you are “saying”) claiming to “get it all.” Believing that non-physical reality does exist doesn’t mean that you believe to know everything about it. As I said, I’ve never met a Christian who claims to understand every feature of ultimately reality (claiming to know certain features about God isn’t the same thing as claim to know EVERYTHING about God, let alone angels, heaven, etc.), but I suppose it’s possible that you have met such people, so once again we’re left with two different samplings and it probably won’t be possible to resolve this discussion here.
Dawkins (not to mention Hitchens and others of the so-called “new atheist” movement) not only demonstrates that he’s no philosopher, but his disdain for religious people simply drips from every page. If not Dawkins (though I’m pretty sure he does) I know Hitchens actually suggests that society would be better if Christians weren’t allowed to raise their own children. They couch it in talk of doing psychological damage to children by scaring them with talk of hell, but this just shows that Dawkins doesn’t really get Christianity anyway (or else, as seems to be the case all over the place today, Dawkins too had has a poor sampling of Christians).
As far as my “hubris” in telling you what you should believe, it’s not really any different than pointing out to a moral relativist that he can’t make any sort of judgment about the holocaust being morally wrong. That’s a claim that you can argue with, and it’s not hubris for me to put forth the claim. You put forth a good argument and I’ll have to take some time to rethink a bit of what I was saying, but we have to be careful that we don’t start throwing around the charge of “hubris” to anyone who makes a truth-claim about just anything at all. That’s what a lot of people do today, and that’s precisely when any hope at reasoned debate is lost.
I’ve lost track of what else I wanted to say, so I’ll just get to the apology. I’m not sure I completely agree with you that by simply making a distinction between educated and uneducated people I was being degrading (especially since my point was to love uneducated people and not let knowledge go to your head), I certainly won’t ignore what you’ve said (especially since you seem to genuinely want to help me). It’s better to ere on the side of caution anyway, right? Now, I actually HAVE read Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx, but not Darwin. And I haven’t read ALL the works of the three authors in question. So, I will be happy to hold my tongue when it comes to these four men from now on, until I have studied them in greater depth, because apparently there’s something I’m missing.
I’d be happy for you to give me a suggested reading, especially since I mostly read classics and I’m obviously not up to date with current secular thought. I can’t make any promises about reading it quickly or soon, since the semester is now in full swing, but I’d love just have the suggestion of something I can read in my spare time. I don’t really have any suggested book for you, but if I can think of one I’ll let you know.
Thank you again for the comments. I’ll try to be more winsome in the future.
Comment? Why can’t I leave another comment?
Wow! I must admit of myself being very impressed…. you see, you and MG are actually the ONLY people I have ever spoken with online, so I have no idea how it generally works. I know there is something about MG’s responses that make me think I am approaching the question in the wrong way, and they exhaust me. I think that I have found the answer to why I do not agree with his claim that it is rational to believe in god. But I have never done such a quick response and it feels rather productive when it is given as such!
I don’t think the claim by atheists is that Darwin got *everything* right, but that the theory of evolution is the best explanation we have. Perhaps that is not what the people you have spoken to said, but I always make it a rule to argue against the most rational position that a side offers, rather than those who make claims that are not necessary to the central tenents of a position. I would not speak against Christians who say “Just trust in God through faith and everything will be okay”, but rather those who attempt to justify god’s existence through arguments. I think any credible scientist will have not only ammended Darwin, but will have admitted that evolution cannot explain all aspects of human behavior. It provides good evidence for our coming into being, but it is much more difficult to explain why we crave to make art or to give to charity. I also think the radical freudians would not be a good representation of the thinker in that they may try to reduce all intentions to latent desires, oedipal or otherwise. Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus is a good example of a freudian thinker who is willing to ammend Freud, but I wouldn’t quite reccomend that text yet. In fact, there are many texts that one must already be an atheist and a Nietzschean in order to read productively. I still have strains of “latent” moralism inside me that isn’t prepared for the radical freeing of the body and of language that such thinkers as Deleuze attempt to do. But I have accepted the premises of atheism, so I am at least able to read the text and supress my “moralistic” bias.
“I must pursue the point I made about atheist hubris. Do you not see the massive difference between making claims about features of ultimate reality and making a claim to understand ultimate reality completely? By accepting that nothing exists beyond the physical, rather than simply being agnostic about it, you are (despite what you are “saying”) claiming to “get it all.” Believing that non-physical reality does exist doesn’t mean that you believe to know everything about it. As I said, I’ve never met a Christian who claims to understand every feature of ultimately reality (claiming to know certain features about God isn’t the same thing as claim to know EVERYTHING about God, let alone angels, heaven, etc.), but I suppose it’s possible that you have met such people, so once again we’re left with two different samplings and it probably won’t be possible to resolve this discussion here.”
I understand your point more clearly now, thank you for elaborating on that. In high school I had two friends who both wanted to call themselves agnostic while I preferred to be called an atheist. They were as atheist as I was, yet they made a similar point by saying “It is just as stupid to say there is no god as to say there is a god”. The concept was outside of reality and therefore beyond our understanding, and it seemed presumptuous to them to try and make a claim either way about it. I sympathize with this position. My question to you is – what about human life makes the question of a reality beyond the physical a legitimate question?
I have a maxim: “While it is never shameful to be a minority, one should always question oneself more thoroughly when one is a minority of a minority”.
I am mostly thinking of science and the minority that believes in creationism versus evolution. Would that minority exist if Christianity was not an institution? I don’t think so.
I think that is the reason that some atheists get upset at religious people. It is not because these ideas of evolution are part of the cultural consciousness that they get angry that christians don’t recognize them, but because they are part of a well-respected and highly intelligent body of people who work with scientific issues and have no discernable reason for supporting evolution other than its truth-value. With such a foundation, questions from within science are certainly going to be well respected, but the contentions of the religious already have a tinge of an agenda that one cannot hope to escape. Science as such may not be objective, but we atheists have a strong sense that christian scientists are even less so.
When did Dawkins claim to be a philosopher?
Religion is not as dangerous as radicalism, and I think Dawkins should emphasize this point more than he does. I don’t know if religion should/could ever be eliminated completely, but certainly it is radicalism and fanaticism that are the real enemies of atheists. Of course, truth should always be pursued, and I don’t think either you or MG are radicals – I am only arguing people I think my position is true. What is the value of truth? That is a good question too.
What do you mean by a “moral relativist”? For some reason I don’t think this idea is an original one.
After Auschwitz, the defense of god’s existence has become an altogether vile activity.
(That is another maxim of mine).
“It’s better to ere on the side of caution anyway, right?”
That is an interesting play on the phrase “It’s better to err on the side of caution”, but I am not sure what it means… perhaps you could explain it to me?
What works have you read my Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud? I am only asking because I am very interested and would like to discuss them with you outside of debate. They are offering a “Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud” class at my school, funny enough, in the German department.
I think the first book that comes into my head is Richard Rorty’s “Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity”. Excellent, excellent.
I am currently at UC Berkeley (I was originally planning to go to UC Santa Cruz but I was convinced otherwise, despite my financial aid). I am taking a German aesthetics class, a french class (level 2 of 4), a class on Heidegger taught by Hubert Dreyfus, a class on philosophical fictions (Rousseau, Nietzsche, Kafka, Sarah Kofman) taught by Judith Butler and a class on John Milton. I am a junior now so they are all upper division courses. Needless to say, I will be very busy as well! But I promise you to have any book you suggest to me finished within a month.
If god really does exist, there should be plenty of books out there that show this very clearly, no?
Good luck to you in your courses, and that avatar is already winsome enough, I’ll say =P
(Just to make certain, the most important question in here is: “What about human life makes the question of a reality beyond the physical a legitimate question?”)