On the Schleiermacher episode, we referred tangentially to Is God a Delusion? A Reply to Religion’s Cultured Despisers, 
He stated that his working title for the book was “How the Religious Right Gets Religion Wrong,” and that it was only upon reading Dawkins’s The God Delusion that he felt he should change his approach. He says that a colleague suggested he should call it “A Pox on Both Your Houses,” and even though the book is an attempt to rebut point by point Dawkins’s arguments (which Reitan summarizes nicely in this introduction), Reitan is also very critical of the very beliefs Dawkins attacks (from p. 7):
I will not be defending the doctrine of biblical inerrancy because I think it is both mistaken and dangerous. I will not be defending the doctrine of hell because I think that it is mistaken and (at least in its most traditional formulations) dangerous. I will not be defending the divine command theory of ethics… because I think it is both mistaken and dangerous. I will not be defending the legitimacy of “faith” understood as stubborn belief without regard for evidence because faith in that sense is a dangerous and inappropriate basis for forming one’s convictions…
What should be clear is that many actual religions tread shamelessly… into the domain of superstition and ideology; and when they do so, they render themselves appropriate fodder for Dawkins’ attacks. Dawkins’ mistake is… to blithely assume that theistic religion itself falls prey to these attacks. It does not.
Like Karen Armstrong’s book, this supposed entry in the “pro-religion” column is a liberal reinterpret of religion, and like Schleiermacher, Reitan faces the challenge of making what he’s defending at all relevant to what most Christians think they’re defending. From p. 6:
I teach and work in Oklahoma, which is at least one “buckle” of the American Bible Belt. And I soon learned after coming here that when I describe my faith to my students, calling myself “Christian” strikes many as akin to describing an eighteen-legged purple animal with an elephantine nose, and then calling it a horse.
Time permitting, I’ll dip into this further in preparation for our new atheists episode, which is currently planned for recording in late July or August.
Reitan’s book is available in Kindle edition
If your favorite book is the New Testament are you a Christian?
Why not?
If your favorite book is Being and Time you are a Heideggerian.
The New Testament is an original work with unique themes.
One need only look at Monday night’s Repulican presidential debate to know how much these religious re-interpretations are sticking. Not one of the candidates (except maybe Ron Paul), felt that the country was religiously neutral. Yes, we “tolerate” other religions, but really it’s always been a Christian nation right?
On the one hand, the Christianists do not make up a majority in this country, but on the other, they are still probably the largest single block of religiously inspired people.
From the recent episode, it seemed like schleiermacher wanted people to look at religion as expressive, but not necessarily as something containing truth value (am I getting that right?).
That’s the jump that seems to me to be the problem. From, through my religion I experience profound meaning, to, through my religion I experience truth. In the former, one gets in contact with a motivational force it seems, that can than be channeled. In the latter, one gets in touch with a first principle that then informs all other others.
Reitan may be clearer than Schleiermacher on this. Just from his adumbration of what will be in the book, he states that he conceives faith as a species of hope, which it is rational (on practical grounds) to hold. So it’s not knowledge, as in “I know that God is such and such,” but it’s also not foreign to the whole realm of knowledge as Schleiermacher claims. It’s “I don’t have epistemic grounds to claim that God is such-and-such, but it would be awesome if that were the case, and there’s no evidence against it, and it makes my life better to live as if it were true.” With this defense, it has to sell itself on practical grounds: a life filled with love and respect that leaves everyone better off, as opposed to a defensive, assholish claim to superiority and indignation.
Interesting point, Ethan. I guess the real problem in the culture is disagreement over what constitutes a “religion”. I have always associated religious belief as requiring belief in some kind of supernatural entity. Of course, the evolution of religious belief has led to redefinitions of what constitutes the supernatural.
(Or if I understand Mark correctly, he believes those tensions have always been present…it’s just that for thousands of years dogmatic religious cataphatists had the means to persecute and suppress non-dogmatic apophatists.)
But your conception sounds more like a kind of humanistic ethical (or existential?) commitment. I don’t mean this as a criticism, but how would your religion be meaningfully distinguished from the worldview of someone like Richard Dawkins?
Dawkins is devoted to both truth and ethical principle (he’s a fan of Bentham). But Dawkins certainly would not describe himself as religious. Again, I’m not trying to gainsay you, just asking – what’s the cash difference between those two approaches?
Honestly Daniel, to me, nothing.
That’s why I’ve never felt very offended by the “New Athiests.”
Yes, their rhetoric is harsh, and usually over the top, to the point where many who might agree with less controversial formulations of their positions are forced to dismiss them. But as someone who is a political junkie, I’m use to reading between the lines.
Now maybe that makes me a “New Atheist” revisionist. It’s not clear that how I would formulate their positions is something they would agree with. But I’ve never seen them as hostile as negative as others.
Harris is a mystical empiricist, Dawkins a scientific naturalist, and Hitchens a literary polemicist. But more than anything, they like to write books, give debates, and do media appearences.
I’m sure if we were in the throws of dogmatic, Darwinian materialism they would push back in the opposite way.
So in the end, I view their strong positions as largely reactionary ones necessitated by what they see as a rhetorical context favoring their opponents in fundamental and deeply socialized ways.
I agree about the supernatural part, and I think most if not 99% of regular people associate having “religious belief” with having belief in something supernatural and immaterial, i.e. not of this world or comprehensible by it.
Although it is common to respond to the new atheists by defending religion, I think a better response would explicitly draw on the values characteristic of the philosophical tradition. The Platonic dialogues, for instance, often lead their readers through chains of reasoning that are mind-expanding and uplifting. Socrates, moreover, insists always on sticking step-by-step with his interlocutor, always with the aim of assisting the interlocutor in genuinely seeing and loving the truth. The new atheists, on the other hand, speak in the voice of the verdict, not the inquirer or benevolent mentor. Their modus operandi is to publicly mock and marginalize the religious, using the truth as a weapon with which they may annihilate their religious foes for the betterment of the culture. In the service of their epistemic superiority, they are eager to fly the flag of their rationality over the religious territory they regard science as having conquered and colonized. They have responded to the culture war by enlisting in it and finding ways of outdoing their opponents with respect to both volume and rhetoric.
I fail to see any of the philosophical virtues characteristic of Socratic moral instruction or Kantian regard for dignity in their approach. In terms of academic merit, moreover, professional philosophers will hardly feel threatened by those naive scientistic remarks about science and morality that folks like Sam Harris disseminate in such a profound, original tone.
I say none of this, by the way, to dismiss the concerns motivating the movement or the conclusions that they come to, mostly with which I have great sympathy.
This seems an accurate description of Hitchens, certainly. At the other extreme, Dennett’s book is all about “here are some intriguing theories from evolutionary biology that we need to consider,” not about stating completed verdicts.
First, let me say that I find these podcasts to be fantastic. Great listening – thanks, guys. (As someone who lives on an island off the north coast of Scotland, I was intrigued by the notion that people who live in the north tend to have “harder” philosophies than those in the south. As a Scottish Presbyterian – an endangered species – I think that the same thing applies to theology. Theology as geography? Up in these lands of winter darkness, we know how to give “dour” a bad name.)
I found the Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher discussions fascinating. (Daniel is a star, by the way.) It is interesting to me, as someone who doesn’t find faith easy, how religion keeps popping up – despite the fact that it’s supposed to be on the wane. Has that surprised the guys running the show?
Thanks for listening, Ron. Yes, Daniel will be back to talk with us about Buber in 2013.