LINK: Philip Kitcher on Militant Modern Atheism

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 19, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

From the abstract:

Militant modern atheism, whose most eloquent champion is Richard Dawkins, provides an effective and necessary critique of fundamentalist forms of religion and their role in political life, both within states and across national boundaries. Because it is also presented as a more general attack on religion (tout court), it has provoked a severe reaction from scholars who regard its conception of religion as shallow and narrow. My aim is to examine this debate, identifying insights and oversights on both sides.

Two distinct conceptions of religion are in play. For Dawkins and his allies (most notably Dan Dennett) religions are grounded in doctrines, propositions about supernatural entities, events and processes which the devout believe. Their beliefs prompt them to actions, which they support or rationalize by reference to the doctrines. Dawkins and Dennett view the acceptance of the doctrines as resting on cognitive misfiring — these are delusions to be outgrown or spells to be broken.

By contrast, the religious scholars who criticize the militant atheists often view religion as centered in social practices that inform and enrich human lives. To the extent that there are doctrines that atheists might subject to epistemic evaluation, these are to be viewed as pieces of scaffolding, that are, in principle, dispensable.

I argue that militant modern atheism is incomplete (and likely counter-productive) so long as it fails to attend systematically to the roles religion fulfills in human lives. Yet it is important to achieve public clarity about the literal falsehood of the doctrines on which fundamentalists rely. The challenge is to develop a well-articulated and convincing version of secular humanism. Meeting that challenge is, I claim, one of the central problems of philosophy today.

Unfortunately, online access to this paper is not free (see here for options), but I did find several discussions of Kitcher's paper on the web:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/kitcher-and-dennett-on-new-atheism.html
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/kitcher-versus-dennett-is-new-atheism-counterproductive-2
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_11.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/curently-reading-philip-kitchers.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_13.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_15.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_21.html

John Stewart and Richard Dawkins on Ted Haggard

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on November 25, 2006. It was republished here on November 7, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. Unfortunately, the link has mysteriously disappeared from Patheos and I wasn't able to quickly find it when searching on YouTube.]

 

Here is the description of the video as provided at YouTube:

"Jon Stewart analyzes the latest gay surprise as the evangelical, gay-bashing preacher, Pastor Ted, gets caught with his three-year gay lover and supplier of crystal meth. What else is new? For an added bit of spice, there is an earlier clip of Haggard lecturing Richard Dawkins on arrogance. Just too beautiful."

While Haggard's behavior (buying crystal meth and a "massage" from a gay prostitute) are clearly hugely embarrassing to evangelical Christians, what is not so clear is whether anything of philosophical significance follows from his behavior. For example, I've heard many people refer to Haggard as a "hypocrite," but the fact is that Haggard never tried to marry a man and he never claimed that homosexuality is morally acceptable. On the contrary, Haggard made it very clear that he considered his behavior morally wrong -- and he seemed pretty sincere to me when condemned himself. I conclude that Haggard sincerely believes homosexuality is wrong, but he obviously has some sort of internal struggle with his sexual orientation that prevents him from consistently behaving in accordance with that belief.

What I find much more interesting is the portion of video where Dawkins gets into a somewhat heated exchange with Haggard over science. Haggard actually has the audacity to lecture Dawkins on "intellectual arrogance." Why? Because Dawkins pointed out the absurdity of Haggard's claim that evolution is the view that things like eyes and ears came about by "accident." As Dawkins correctly points out, no evolutionary biologist believes such a thing. That Haggard would make such a statement reveals his utter ignorance of contemporary science. It's okay if evangelicals like Haggard want to reject evolution (and even urge others to do so), but the least they can do is to actually reject evolution and not some Sunday school strawman version of it.

Links: Two Articles about Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on November 4, 2006. It was republished here on November 7, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]

Atheists top book charts by deconstructing God

The Church of the Non-Believers