Rorty among the believers

Naturally, there have been many posts about Rorty's death on philosophy-related blogs, like here and here and here (which even links to little old me). But I'm impressed by how often the news has been mentioned on blogs which don't have all that much to do with philosophy. I knew on some level that Rorty was fairly popular outside of philosophical circles, but I've still been surprised. (Some philosophers would say that this is owing to the fact that Rorty's appeal was limited to the philosophically ignorant. Which, I suppose, I was when I first became a Rorty fan.)

In particular, I'm surprised by how often he's been mentioned, and treated with respect and even admiration, on religion-oriented blogs like SoMA, Jesus Politics (in a series of links), Levellers (link via Jesus Politics), and the conservative First Things (link via Levellers). Rorty was an outspoken atheist who clearly didn't see religion as any sort of personal option, thought that it was about time that modern culture grew up and got over the religious urge (and here he included secular imitations of religion--e.g., what he saw as a tendency to treat scientists as a replacement priesthood), and took a hard line against there being any role for religion in the public political sphere. Yet there are apparently quite a few theists who found him worth reading, and worth engaging on something more than a merely polemical level. (I have in the past detected some distinctly Rorty-flavoured vocabulary coming out of the local divinity school. Of course, I'm unconvinced that the divinity school is particularly religious, so that might not mean much.)

It might even be possible that he managed to convince some theists to reconsider the wish that God had more of a place in political discourse. Well, that's pure speculation on my part, but he presented a good case (the same case that you'll find in Rawls or Habermas--but with better rhetoric). I'm thinking that maybe the "new atheists" should take some notes, assuming they have any interest in going beyond mere polemics, and saying something potentially useful. From the Levellers post:

As a believer, I also appreciate having atheistic dialogue partners like Rorty, rather than the current wave of angry atheists (fundamentalists of unbelief!) like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

But I suppose an "angry atheist" might think that this just shows that Rorty was too soft on religion.

(Incidentally, as I've said before, I don't think Dennett belongs on that list. The basic idea of the book--that the phenomenon of religion should be subject to empirical examination, and that the religious shouldn't shy away from that--sounds fine to me, as far as it goes. Though I suppose I should probably actually read the thing before I really pass judgment on it. Dennett was another big philosophical influence on me, back in the day, so I'm not entirely unbiased here.)

Harris explained

Sam Harris (among others) likes to portray religious "moderates" and non-"literalist" interpreters of scripture as somehow deviant or deficient qua religious persons. For example, in his opening salvo in his blog-debate against Andrew Sullivan earlier this year, he says:

Given my view of faith, I think that religious "moderation" is basically an elaborate exercise in self-deception....

Harris thinks that all religion is bad, but in the case of "moderates" he not only faults them for being religious, he also faults them for failing to be really religious. He sees "moderates" as guilty of having committed themselves to a bad game, and then guilty again of playing that game really poorly.

In the eyes of many people (both believers and non) who have more sensible views of religion, this attitude can be a bit mystifying.

A common diagnosis is that these are prejudices which get adopted just out of convenience. It is convenient (so the story goes) to cast "literalists" as the paradigm religious believers because "moderates" and non-"literalists" are harder targets for anti-religious manifestos. Now, there might be some truth to this, but I doubt it's the whole story. Besides, it's not at all clear to me that, in general, "moderates" make for tougher game. For example, Sullivan is a "moderate" if anyone is, and is a generally articulate writer to boot, but that doesn't seem to slow down Harris' rhetoric much at all. (I didn't follow the whole debate, but from what I did read, I'm inclined to give Harris the win.)

Another diagnosis, made by Slacktivist, seems to suggest that Harris et al. are, like "literalist" believers (whom he dubs "illiteralists"), suffering from a lack of literacy skills--leading them to be incapable of figuring out how there might be truth in a text without it having to be read literally. But this seems pretty implausible to me. As best as I can tell, Harris functions at a high level of literacy, and is perfectly capable of understanding that, in principle, there is a difference between reading scripture non-literally, and falsifying it. (And actually, I'm not sure this is really the right way to describe what is motivating "literalist" theists, either, but I won't get into that now.)

Anyway, I thought I'd say something about what I think is going on behind Harris' anti-"moderate" and pro-"literalist" attitudes. I can't recall anywhere where he spells this rationale out explicitly, but I think it makes sense of some of the things he says.

It's all based on this starting point (from the same post as above):

Perhaps I should acknowledge at the outset that people use the term "faith" in a variety of ways. My use of the word is meant to capture belief in specific religious propositions without sufficient evidence....

In the philosophy biz, we appreciate this sort of terminological clarification. That said, Harris' explanation of what he means by "faith" could be fleshed out quite a bit more.

First, I think that, at some level, Harris understands, as he ought to, that "faith" is the name of an aspiration. To declare oneself as a follower of a certain faith is to make a substantial commitment, one which makes demands on a person. The religious person can live up to this religious commitment to a greater or lesser extent--it is possible to be more or less faithful in one's religious commitment.

Now, if we assume that faith just is "belief in specific religious propositions without sufficient evidence", we seem to have a pretty straightforward way of measuring a person's faithfulness: tally up the number of "religious propositions without sufficient evidence" which the believer believes, and that will tell you how faithful he or she is.

Now, for this to be at all a plausible picture, we're going to have to clarify it by specifying that, when dealing with a follower of religion X, we need to focus on those "religious propositions" which are associated specifically with religion X. (So, for example, the proposition that Joseph Smith read divine revelation off of golden tablets is a proposition specific to Mormonism, and it would be silly to see it as somehow relevant to measuring the faithfulness of a Muslim.)

But now consider two Christians, both of whom believe in the Bible in some sense--but one of them is a "literalist", and one of them is not. The non-"literalist" is probably going to read the Bible as expressing some "religious propositions without sufficient evidence", but it's pretty certain that the "literalist" is going to read the Bible as expressing a considerably greater number of "religious propositions without sufficient evidence". In both cases, there is some sort of Christian faith, as Harris understands it. But, compared to the non-"literalist", the "literalist" is going to end up believing a greater number of "religious propositions" associated with Christianity. And so, given Harris' method of measuring faithfulness, the "literalist" is clearly the more faithful of the two, with the non-"literalist" being a comparative failure as a person of faith.

So there you go. Doesn't that all make sense?

Dennett: the war discredits religion

I feel the need to get that Jesus-Boxer picture off of the top of the page, so I guess it's time for a new post.

Over at On Faith, Daniel Dennett answers the question of whether the invasion of Iraq constituted a just war. He spends most of his response giving the obvious answer, and then turns his attention to the role of religion in the move towards invasion:

Inflating these declarations [of good intent] with religious rhetoric about God being on our side is nothing less than obscene, however sincerely these protestations of faith may be uttered.

OK, so far so good. But Dennett continues:

Nothing has done more to discredit religious faith in recent years than the self-righteous overconfidence with which our leaders have “listened to God” instead of listening to the knowledgeable secular advisors who have warned them, repeatedly, of the follies they were embarking on.

Defenders of religion are eager to point out that the motivation for this war was not religious, in spite of President Bush’s blunder in calling it a “crusade,” but they must admit that the administration’s faith in faith over faith in facts has probably been the principle cause of the moral calamity that now confronts us.

I'm not sure where he got the idea that the decision to invade Iraq had anything to do with anyone thinking they'd "listened to God". The only relevant piece of evidence I can think of comes from this report:

According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

But this piece of testimony is pretty worthless, as was pointed out in Common Dreams (not an outfit known for its loyalty to Dubya):

Before you jump to any conclusions, remember that you are reading a translation of a translation of a translation. Mahmoud Abas does not speak English. Bush does not speak Arabic. If Bush said these words, or something like them, Abas heard them from a translator. Then Abas repeated them, as he remembered them a couple of weeks later, in Arabic. Some unknown person wrote down what he thought he heard Abas say. Then Regular, or someone at Ha'aretz, translated them back into English-or perhaps first into Hebrew and then into English.

Clearly, we don't yet know what Bush said, or why.

There is plenty of room to criticize the decision to go to war without basing criticisms on unsubstantiated hearsay.

Even if Bush did think that God had told him to invade Iraq, I doubt that Cheney or Rumsfeld or the other major figures in the Admin would ever have cared much about Bush's imagined conversations with God. It's true that the invasion was based in a kind of faith, but it was faith in a purely political fantasy (being greeted as liberators, democracy spreading throughout the region, etc.). What that has to do with religion is anyone's guess.

And even if religious claims had played some substantial role in the decision to go to war, it's mysterious how that could serve to "discredit religious faith" in general, as Dennett claims.

The "new atheism" and Islamic terrorists

I made a post about the "new atheism" and history, so I thought I might as well round it out with a post on how Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris think about some more recent events.

Anti-Muslim attitudes are hardly the exclusive province of the "new atheism", but you do find them there. (Naturally, I continue to leave Dennett out of this.) In support of the claim that religion is dangerous, the chief contemporary example is of course the 9/11 attacks, and associated terrorist attacks by Muslims. Somehow these attacks are supposed to be motivated adherence to Islamic principles.

Well, I think I mentioned this before, but, as far as I can tell, the motivations of terrorists and the reasons why Muslims tend to be angry at the West don't have much to do with specifically Islamic or specifically religious ideals.

Before I get into details, here's an interesting comparison. Can the Rwandan genocide, in which Hutu militias killed about a million people (mostly Tutsis, but some not) over the course of about a hundred days, be explained by reference to ideals inherent in Hutu religion or Hutu culture? Were there inherently violent Hutu ideals which helped motivate that insane slaughter? Well, no. The Hutu and Tutsi populations shared pretty much the same religious demographics, and there was no such thing as a specifically Hutu culture, or specifically Hutu ideals. But that didn't prove any obstacle to power-hungry Hutu demagogues.

With that in mind, let's consider the two common candidates for Islamic ideals especially responsible for terrorism by Muslims: jihad and martyrdom. Dawkins, for example, picked up these points a few days after 9/11, and has been waving them about ever since. In The End of Faith, Sam Harris follows suit and declares:

Subtract the Muslim belief in martyrdom and jihad, and the actions of suicide bombers become completely unintelligible

OK, let's see about that.

Jihad

The standard view of jihad seems to be this. Jihad is primarily a spiritual struggle. I'm not sure, but some Muslims seem not to recognize violent forms of jihad at all. For those who do, though, violent jihad, jihad as holy war, isn't what some seem to think it is: you don't embark on a holy war just because some random nut says that Allah said so, or because you don't like non-Muslims. Rather, violent jihad is authorized by the Koran under specific circumstances: when Islam is facing violent persecution. That is, if an armed force is trying to wipe Islam off of the face of the earth, Muslims are warranted in coming together and fighting back in the name of Islam.

Three comments about this conception of jihad.

First, this isn't a view specific to "moderate" Muslims, but can be seen also in the arguments Islamic terrorists give in justification of their activities: a central premise is that Islam is under attack by America and its allies, Israel in particular. This is explicit in Bin Laden's 1998 fatwah declaring holy war, for example. He argues for holy war against America, and the two main premises of this argument are:

All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans [in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Israel] are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims. And ulema have throughout Islamic history unanimously agreed that the jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries.

Second, it's not hard to see how a demagogue like Bin Laden could make a convincing case for the claim that the West is violently persecuting Islam. Bin Laden referred to Western and Israeli military activity, and while the real motivations for that activity have little to do with the fact that the people in the area are predominantly Muslim, it probably wouldn't take much spin to create that perception. (In terms of religious persecution complexes, this one is infinitely more plausible than that of those Christians who imagine that they suffer political persecution here in America.) Once that's settled, add to it the fact that Muslims are seriously outgunned, and things can look grim for the future of Islam.

Finally, you don't need to be a Muslim to think that a violent response is warranted when violent persecution is threatening your very way of life. Quite the contrary: assuming it's at all possible to do so, it would be extraordinary for a people to refuse to respond violently in the face of that sort of threat. Such a refusal would require an uncompromising pacifism bordering on religious fervor, or a visionary or prophet showing a better way. (History records one occasion when the enlightened democratic West seemed genuinely threatened in its very way of life. The response involved Churchill firebombing German cities - civilians and all.)

Martyrdom

As for martyrdom, the promises of virgins in the afterlife, or whatever, I can't see how that's relevant. For one thing, I can't imagine what difference it makes that the 9/11 terrorists perished in their own attacks; it hardly would have been an improvement if they'd managed to kill all those people while living to tell the tale.

The problem isn't that the 9/11 attackers died in their attacks; the problem is that they made the attacks at all. And the concept of martyrdom isn't necessary for the conclusion that Americans should be killed. If the concept of martyrdom plays any role at all, it's in... well, let's follow Bill Maher in being honest in our labeling: all a belief in martyrdom can explain is how these guys got so brave as to be willing to pilot planes into buildings while remaining in the planes. It doesn't explain why they accepted the cause of killing Americans, but maybe it could explain why they were willing to sacrifice their lives for that cause.

Is that right? Is it necessary to believe in the Muslim afterlife in order to do die for a cause, whatever it may be? Is it necessary to believe in any sort of afterlife? Not as far as I can tell. You might as well declare that there are no atheists in foxholes.

(It's an interesting asymmetry in the minds of many atheists of the anti-religious variety that they are entirely willing to implicate beliefs about the afterlife in the commission of evil acts, but reluctant to implicate such beliefs in the commission of good acts. Belief in the afterlife is not the least bit necessary to be willing to sacrifice oneself for a good cause, but it must play a crucial role in the willingness to sacrifice oneself for an evil cause.)

* * *

Now, I said that specifically Islamic ideals (the ones brought up above, at least) aren't really necessary to explain the motives underlying terrorism on the part of Muslims. That said, I think Islam does play a role. But it's the same role played by nationality or race in other conflicts: it's a source of group identity that can be exploited by demagogues under the right sorts of circumstances. As in the role played by "Hutu identity" in the Rwandan genocide, the content of that identity, or whether or not it even has any discernible content, isn't essential.

The "new atheism" and history

Common to the recent anti-religious writings of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris is (roughly) the following train of thought: (A) religion is irrational, and (B) tends to lead people to be irrational about pretty much everything, and so (C) tends to lead to violence.

Sometimes it seems that (C) is supposed to follow from the general principles of (A) and (B), in apriori-ish fashion. But of course concrete evidence is needed, and so usual suspects like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and, more recently, terrorist attacks by Muslims are trotted out.

Regarding the historical examples of supposedly religiously motivated violence, blogger Shannon Love criticizes Dawkins on the grounds that (let's say) his grasp of history lacks opposable thumbs. Love (an atheist, and former Dawkins admirer) notes that there was no non-religious world-view around back in the day, and remarks:

This leads to a form of confirmation bias on the part of atheists. They look into the distant past, see some actions we disapprove of in the modern world, notice that the people who chose the actions had a religious world view, and conclude that the religious world view caused the problem. However, since everybody in the distant past had a religious world view, and no significant decision makers until the very recent past had an atheistic world view, the fact that decision makers in the past were religious tells us about as much about them as the fact that they all breathed oxygen.

That last bit made me giggle.

There's further discussion about the Crusades and Inquisition, which I don't really know about, but it sounds good. She moves on to the modern era to consider some of the morally questionable political activities spawned by atheists, as well as the abolition of slavery and the establishment of welfare programs, where religious motivations seem to play a central role. None of these points really prove anything, but whatever. All the reviews of Dawkins and Harris that I've seen in major periodicals have turned out to be pretty unenlightening (whether they're pro or con), but this one's all right.

(A note of regret concerning the title. Because it's a catchy label, I've used "new atheism" to refer to Harris and Dawkins and their followers. Unfortunately, Daniel Dennett has also been lumped in with them under that category, despite the fact that he can actually navigate an argument and make decent conceptual distinctions, and proposes a critical look at religion without being anti-religious. I think he belongs in better company.)

Dream the impossible blaspheme

The Rational Response Squad has issued the following Blasphemy Challenge to all non-believers:

The Rational Response Squad is giving away 1001 DVDs of The God Who Wasn't There, the hit documentary that the Los Angeles Times calls "provocative -- to put it mildly."

Incidentally, I saw that documentary a while back (well before my conversion), and found it pretty underwhelming. Maybe that's partly because I was then part of the choir to which it was preaching, but I also thought that some bits were uncomfortably childish and petty. But, hey, free is free, and this remains a pretty generous giveaway. Back to the Challenge:

There's only one catch: We want your soul.

It's simple. You record a short message damning yourself to Hell, you upload it to YouTube, and then the Rational Response Squad will send you a free The God Who Wasn't There DVD. It's that easy.

...

You may damn yourself to Hell however you would like, but somewhere in your video you must say this phrase: "I deny the Holy Spirit."

Why? Because, according to Mark 3:29 in the Holy Bible, "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." Jesus will forgive you for just about anything, but he won't forgive you for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Ever. This is a one-way road you're taking here.

Indeed, Mark 3:29 comes from the mouth of Jesus himself. Unfortunately, the claim that he's talking about denying the existence of the holy spirit is textually indefensible.

I don't know if anyone really knows what Jesus is talking about here, but it's clarified a bit by the context. The set-up for Jesus' declaration in v.29 is given in v.22:

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons."

It's in response to them that Jesus says (vv.28-29):

"I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."

And, in case the reader has forgotten the context given in v.22, a reminder is given immediately thereafter (v.30):

He said this because they were saying, "He has an evil spirit."

So, blaspheming the holy spirit involves something like accusing the holy spirit of being an evil spirit. I'm not sure what it would mean to do that (it's not clear that Jesus is even accusing the people in v.22 of doing it - this could just be a warning), but, at the very least, it seems that blasphemy of the holy spirit involves having certain spiritual beliefs, which might also involve believing in the Abrahamic God.

This pretty much rules out the possibility that any genuine atheist could truly rise to the Blasphemy Challenge. Merely denying the existence of the holy spirit has nothing to do with blaspheming the holy spirit, and whatever this unforgivable sin really is, atheists can't commit it. Blasphemy Challenge is right that this is a "one-way road", but it seems likely that it's not a road that atheists can take. And one consequence of this is that there's nothing an atheist can do to eliminate the possibility of someday undergoing the terrifying process of Christian salvation.

Shelley: atheistic champion of reason

It's common in some quarters to associate atheism with rationality. Sometimes people can make a decent case for this. But, for others, it's just a dull prejudice which, on occasion, moves them to say some silly things.

Here's an example from a Wired article on "the New Atheism" (via Paul in comments):

Oxford University is the capital of reason, its Jerusalem. Logic Lane, a tiny road under a low, right-angled bridge, cuts sharply across to the place where Robert Boyle formulated his law on gases and Robert Hooke first used a microscope to see a living cell. A few steps away is the memorial to Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here he lies, sculpted naked in stone, behind the walls of the university that expelled him almost 200 years ago -- for atheism.

So, Boyle, Hooke, and Shelley are cited as champions of reason? Well, Boyle and Hooke (both of whom were Christians, as it happens) are all right, though they're not the best a person could come up with.* But Shelley? The author implies that Shelley's atheism shows how rational he was. But Shelley was a great Romantic poet, part of a movement that was, in large part, a reaction to the unconditional veneration of reason (and associated ideals of the Enlightenment).

A quick glance at Shelley's The Necessity of Atheism (which led to his expulsion from Oxford) suggests two things about his thoughts on religion. First, the tract is hardly a showcase of reasoned argument. Second, Shelley wasn't an atheist:

This negation [that there is no God] must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken.

The term "atheism" used to be used quite a bit more loosely than it is nowadays; nowadays, we'd probably say that Shelley was a pantheist. (Coincidentally, I'm currently reading On Religion, by another prominent Romantic, Schleiermacher. In that book, Schleiermacher defends a conception of religion which is probably more or less identical to Shelley's belief in a "pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe". Both Schleiermacher and Shelley seem to be fond of Spinoza, who was another famous pantheist who used to get labeled as an atheist.)

_____
* It seems to me that Kant trumps pretty much everyone else in this regard. Of course, Kant doesn't fit into the setting of the article, because he taught at the University of Königsberg, not Oxford. (And this, I'd say, suffices to show that the University of Königsberg has more right to the title of "capital of reason" than does Oxford, based on this principle: If X is the place where Kant worked, then X is the capital of reason.) Plus, Kant was a theist (albeit not much of one).

Richard Dawkins: faith is evil

Some more confused ideas from the Dawkins interview:

I think there's something very evil about faith, where faith means believing in something in the absence of evidence, and actually taking pride in believing in something in the absence of evidence.

Actually, a lot of believers think that there is plenty of evidence for their beliefs. Some creationists, for example, will say that it takes more faith to be an atheist than a creationist. I think they're wrong about the evidence, and wrong about what faith is, but in any case Dawkins' characterization of faith doesn't fit this substantial section of the religious populace. Anyway, moving on:

And the reason that's dangerous is that it justifies essentially anything.

Technically what I think he's talking about is believing things without justification. So I suppose he's saying that it's evil to believe things without justification.

There are two problems with what Dawkins says here. The first is that this doesn't have much to do with religion: most cases of unjustified belief have nothing to do with religion at all. The second is that unjustified belief (in and of itself) isn't evil or problematic or even optional. The most rational among us can justify our beliefs only to a point--eventually justifications run out. As per the namesake of this blog:

If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

Of course, having an unjustified evil belief is evil--but that's because the belief is evil, not because it's unjustified. So, let's cut to the kernel of insight which Dawkins provides: evil things are evil.

Dawkins provides some examples of such evil beliefs, and then goes on to discuss the role of faith in society (the bolded emphasis is mine):

If you're taught in your holy book or by your priest that blasphemers should die or apostates should die -- anybody who once believed in the religion and no longer does needs to be killed -- that clearly is evil. And people don't have to justify it because it's their faith. They don't have to say, "Well, here's a very good reason for this." All they need to say is, "That's what my faith says." And we're all expected to back off and respect that.

I'm not sure how Dawkins could possibly think that last sentence there is true. Hereabouts, nobody is the least bit expected to respect the notion that blasphemers and apostates ought to be killed. And while my knowledge of the cultural norms of Britain is somewhat limited, I'm pretty sure the same goes for Dawkins' side of the pond as well.

Whether or not we're actually faithful ourselves, we've been brought up to respect faith and to regard it as something that should not be challenged. And that can have extremely evil consequences. The consequences it's had historically -- the Crusades, the Inquisition, right up to the present time where you have suicide bombers and people flying planes into skyscrapers in New York -- all in the name of faith.

Well, we are expected to respect some forms of faith, and let some forms of faith go without challenge, at least at a political level. Dawkins has apparently convinced himself that this ideal of mutual religious respect extends, without qualification, to those "evil consequences" he lists. This is simply false, obviously bizarre--maybe Dawkins should turn his critique of unjustified belief against himself.

Richard Dawkins on literalism

Richard Dawkins has an interview in Salon promoting his new anti-religious book. He makes a number of claims against religion (in all its forms). None of them is particularly good, and I've got something to say about them all. But I'll start with a relatively easy one:

Dawkins: [Some people who were raised religious] remember reading their holy book, and they take it literally. They really do believe it. Now, the moderate ones don't really believe it, but they have taught children that faith is a virtue.

So, the first claim I'd like to address:

Believers who don't interpret their religious texts literally don't really believe in those texts.

Regarding the possibility of different ways of really believing in scripture, I'll just repeat this bit from this Real Live Preacher post:

That old man that you brushed aside? The one you called a liberal and a wishy-washy Christian? He spent the last fifty years with his hands and his heart in the pages of that sacred book. He has wept over it and searched for truth in its stories. His unanswered questions have increased every year until finally he knows nothing at all but the love of God and neighbor.

He knows something that you do not know.

So, yes, you can interpret scripture non-literally, and yet truly believe in it.

But there's a deeper problem with Dawkins' claim. Far from believing that only a literalist can really believe in a religious text, I'm actually inclined towards aliteralistism: the belief that literalists don't exist. At least, I believe that this is the case in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

My reasoning here is that there are verses in the Old Testament which cannot be interpreted literally. And by "cannot" I mean it's impossible--not wrong or awkward or silly, but impossible. Consider, for example, Song of Solomon 4:12 (I've chosen the King James translation, which is of course the most literalisty of all translations):

A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

Interpreted literally, this verse means that there exists a garden, which is also a spring and a fountain, and that this garden/spring/fountain is the author's sister and his wife. It's not just false or silly or awkward, but (literally) impossible to suppose that the author of the verse is saying any such thing. (Just to be perfectly clear, I'll point out the problems here. For one thing, while springs and fountains are kinda similar, gardens aren't much like either of them--although a garden might contain a spring, a garden cannot be identical to a spring. For another thing, neither a garden nor a spring nor a fountain is a person; hence such an entity cannot be a member of a human family as a sister, and cannot enter the bonds of holy matrimony as a spouse. As for the claim that the author of the verse is married to his sister, that's a little weird, but there might be some precedent for that sort of thing in the Old Testament.)

So I can only conclude that, when it is claimed that someone is a literalist, that claim is necessarily false, and also crazy.

Either that, or the term "literalist" isn't meant to be interpreted literally, which would be cute.

(Via Jesus Politics.)

Sam Harris doesn't grok goats

Albert Mohler writes a brief review of Sam Harris' brief new book. I found it interesting mostly for the quotes. Naturally, Harris' new book has some things to say about "religious liberalism/moderation":

I have written elsewhere about the problems I see with religious liberalism and religious moderation. Here, we need only observe that the issue is both simpler and more urgent than the liberals and moderates generally admit. [...] If the basic tenets of Christianity are true, then there are some very grim surprises in store for nonbelievers like myself.

I guess he's talking about hell. I'm not sure why Harris has any interest whatsoever in what any theist thinks his fate in the afterlife will be. In any case, he wants to accuse "liberals" of faithlessness on the grounds that, for example, they think Christian salvation is more universal than the Bible really says it is.

Regarding what he takes the Bible to really say about salvation (and, by implication, where "liberals" get Christianity wrong), he writes:

If Christianity is correct, and I persist in my unbelief, I should expect to suffer the torments of hell. Worse still, I have persuaded others, and many close to me, to reject the very idea of God. They too will languish in "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41).

It's a curious choice of scripture to prove this particular point. I can only assume that Harris came up with it by typing "eternal fire" into the search function of some site like BibleGateway and picking the best looking verse on the search result page:

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Of course, before using this verse to prove his point, he might want to consider reading the context. In this case, the context is the parable of the sheep and the goats.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'"

Let's focus on what this parable doesn't talk about: namely, belief. In this parable there is nothing, not even a single word, about accepting Jesus as your saviour, or having any thoughts about Jesus at all, or having any thoughts about God at all. There is nothing here to support the idea that "unbelief" implies damnation. To the contrary, this parable ought to make one wonder whether professing a Christian faith, or being any kind of theist at all, is in any way essential for salvation.

Without presupposing any particular interpretation, it seems clear that you would be hard-pressed to read this passage and think that it makes the positive claim that salvation is the exclusive province of Christians. Either Harris didn't bother to read the rest of the parable, or he read it and decided to ignore the context and cite the verse anyways.

(It is also curious that Albert Mohler implicitly endorses Harris' use of Matthew 25:41, or, at least, doesn't think to comment on it. This might have something to do with his theology.)

(Hat tip to Jesus Politics)

Sam Harris: hard on terrorism

In his latest, Sam Harris (the End of Faith guy, and self-described liberal) declares:

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that "liberals are soft on terrorism." It is, and they are.

Here is his chief complaint against liberals (except for himself):

...despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

I'm not sure what this abundant evidence is--Harris provides no hints. But let's focus on the connection between American militarism and Muslim terrorism; let's also focus on Bin Laden's followers, since that's the brand of terrorism which Harris is specifically addressing. How did Bin Laden attract his followers in the first place, pre-9/11? In 1998, he issued a fatwah declaring jihad against all Americans, in which he listed "three facts" which he took to provide an argument for the conclusion that America had already effectively declared war on Islam, necessitating jihad in response.

The three "facts", in brief: US military presence on the Arabian peninsula; US aggression against the Iraqi people; and US military support for Israel. Note the common theme.

A few details aren't immediately relevant here. It's not relevant how bad this "argument" for jihad is. It's not relevant that the "facts" are distortions (well, at least in parts). It's not even relevant that Bin Laden himself possibly didn't really give a damn about most of these issues. What is relevant is that some people received these "facts", and believed that they were true, and believed that they yielded an argument for the violent jihad of which 9/11 was a part.

Of course the situation has changed since 1998. The first "fact" no longer applies, but one imagines that the force of the second "fact" has been immensely strengthened in the eyes of Bin Laden's target audience.

In any case, it certainly looks as if American militarism (or, certain perceptions of it) was in fact a crucial part of Bin Laden's recruitment drive. I'm not sure what Harris would say in response. He ought to have something to say in response, though, if he is going to accuse liberals of ignoring, and even abetting, the One True Cause of terrorism: religious ideas, and the refusal to criticize them.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise.

This is Harris' constant theme. The greatest problem facing the world today is religion: a certain murderous form of it, in the first place; but also liberal ideals of religious tolerance which prevent the criticism of all religious ideas.

Including, apparently, those of Bin Laden and his ilk. Thus it becomes impossible, I guess, to criticize the idea that blowing up a bunch of people with a nuclear bomb will get you into paradise--which is why you'll never find any real criticism of that idea from a secular liberal pluralist, or a theist of any kind, and certainly not any Muslim.

Right. So much for the most substantive points in Harris' article. It mostly goes downhill from there.