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Eric Reitan (via Pale Blue Dot) Refereeing the Atheism Debates

October 21, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

I've written before about Eric Reitan, a modern follower of Scheleirmacher, and on this episode of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot, Reitan gives I think a great explanation of the disagreement between the new atheists and humanistic, liberal Christians: they may agree on nearly all of the same principles (being against Biblical inerrancy and other implausible and morally pernicious parts of fundamentalist Christianity) but still have a different overall assessment of religion because they're "playing different language games." His explanation of religion as an essentially contested concept (a new term to me, though certainly a familiar concept in outline) is alone sufficient to make the episode worth a listen. The concept "religion" is not just a categorization of various things, but it has, like "work of art," a normative judgment built into it. It's just that at this point in history, some folks have a positive evaluation built into the concept, and some have a negative evaluation. So Hitchens and a liberal theologian, according to Reitan, can both agree about nearly everything, but while the theologian holds up some historical fruits of religion and say "see, isn't religion great," Hitchens will respond that that isn't really religion; while Hitchens will point out horrible crimes associated with religion and the theologian (like Scheiermacher) will deny that these are part of the essence of religion. So it's largely an argument over words at that point, though we'd have to be more specific about the particular points of remaining disagreement to determine whether they're really worth arguing over.

We expressed a lot of these same patterns on the episode in trying to elaborate the new atheists' claims: historically, religion often involves ceding ones intellectual authority to a religious leader, and this move is inherently dangerous. Scheleiermacher and Reitan would say that even though this often happens historically, it's no part of real religion, which is instead about direct, honest engagement with its subject matter. Religion can lead to violence, and willful ignorance, and ignoring your own nature and the suffering of those around you. Theologians themselves will certainly admit these facts but say "we're all sinners, we'll try to do better." These aren't the result of religion, but of human nature, though religion is one powerful tool by which these facts about human nature can be exploited, and we need to recognize that and not just blindly approve of anything with the name "religion" branded on it.

I don't think in our discussion we really addressed Harris's charge that faith regarding empirical matters is anti-intellectual. I think we all basically agreed with that claim, but just didn't necessarily like him extending that to matters of faith about things over which empirical verification isn't possible. Still, the line of what is empirical and what isn't can be thin, and the same goes for what counts as "enough evidence" for or against a belief. Can one be rational and believe in miracles? Can one be rational and believe that praying will increase the likelihood of some desired outcome in the world? These issues seem to me crucial for the majority religious folks, and I don't see a lot of common ground between them and the new atheists here, yet clearly, there are plenty of intelligent, self-examining people that will accept these supernatural possibilities even though they verge into the empirical.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Filed Under: Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts Tagged With: atheism, Eric Reitan, philosophy blog, philosophy podcast

Comments

  1. Jay Jeffers says

    October 27, 2011 at 7:15 am

    It seems like we can argue with Hitchens and/or the liberal theologian even if at bottom their disagreement is what counts as religion.

    Of course Hitchens will deny that counterexamples even count as religion, and the liberal theologian will deny that the horrible things were the fault of religion.

    I think of it like if someone came along and told me that government was bad. I would argue that it can be, but isn’t always, and is often good. If in the course of the argument it became apparent that this person’s working definition of government was “a thing that causes bad stuff” I would conclude their definition was tendentious and that they aren’t really trying to convince me of the evidence as much as imposing their definition.

    Anyone who says “isn’t religion great” by pointing to good manifestations or “isn’t religion horrible” by pointing to bad manifestations are doing something kinda questionable, it seems to me. I mean, a person hoping to show the bad things in religion could criticize ideology in general, but that wouldn’t be very sexy or revolutionary, and anyone hoping to show the good things of religion could trumpet the benefits of cooperation, a purpose in life, a regular and disciplined practice, etc, but then the credit would go to those more general things, rather than to religion per se.

    So we have the right to expect people advancing a bold thesis like “religion is awesome” or “religion is horrible” to not build in their conclusion to their definition, or least alert us to what they’re doing and then work on trying to argue for why they’ve apprehended the true category many of us have been missing.

    BTW, really good post. I think it gets to the heart of the issue of the New Atheism-religion debates.

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