H. Allen Orr responds to Dennett's response to Orr's review of Dawkins' The God Delusion and basically captures my position on TGD:
Daniel Dennett's main complaint about my review is that I held Dawkins's book to too high a standard. The God Delusion was, he says, a popular work and, as such, one can't expect it to grapple seriously with religious thought. There are two things wrong with this objection. The first is that the mere fact that a book is intended for a broad audience doesn't mean its author can ignore the best thinking on a subject. Indeed it's precisely the task of the popularizer to take this best thinking and present
it in a form that can be understood by intelligent laymen. This task is certainly feasible. Ironically, the clearest evidence comes from Dawkins himself. In his popular works on evolution, and especially in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins wrestled with the best evolutionary thinkers --Darwin, Hamilton, and Trivers--and presented their ideas in a way that could be appreciated by a broad audience. This is what made The Selfish Gene brilliant; the absence of any analogous treatment of religion in Dawkins's
new book is what makes it considerably less than brilliant. ...Finally, Dennett fundamentally misunderstands my review. He seems to think that I'm disturbed by Dawkins's atheism and pointedly asks which religious thinkers I prefer instead. But as I made clear, I have no problem with where Dawkins arrived but with how he got there. It's one thing to think carefully about religion and conclude it's dubious. It's another to string together anecdotes and exercises in bad philosophy and conclude that one has resolved subtle problems. I wasn't disappointed in The God Delusion because
I was shocked by Dawkins's atheism. I was disappointed because it wasn't very good.
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So which are the best religious thinkers, those that we should grapple with?
Since when is "Selfish Gene" brilliant? The only weak parts of "God Delusion" were where Dawkins dabbles in evolution.
The Selfish Gene did make Discover.com's 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time list at number 9.
http://www.discover.com/issues/dec-06/features/25-greatest-science-book…
Ah, Coturnix doesn't think Dawkins knows much about evolution.
Which clearly proves that there is a controversy about evolution and that it shouldn't be taught!
Quail:
OK, we get it, you're a big fan of group selection and higher units of selection, etc. Keep those blinders on. The Selfish Gene contains better, clearer explanations of evolution, and far more original ideas than you will ever address in a lifetime of name-dropping blog-whoring. It IS brilliant, and to suggest otherwise, as if you know more about evolution than anybody else, makes you appear foolish.
"So which are the best religious thinkers, those that we should grapple with?"
That's the problem. They never say precisely. Orr elludes to a few, but in an off hand way in a discussion that makes clear that he expected Dawkins to grapple with many more.
And of course, that's just Orr's list. Doubtless everyones got one. The Pope, Robertson/Fawell, Jews, Scientologists, Mormons, Pentacostals, Shia's, Sunnis, Hindus, Jovians, Methodists, Lutherans, Coptics, ...
Since all of the above believe only they are the true religion, if you don't engage their philosophers, you failed.
John, Orr's review reflects my own position, as well. As an atheist, I have no problem being critical of religious faith. However, I find the fundamentalism of some of my fellow non-believers more than a little offputting.
"The Church of Non-believers" an article about the new atheism by Gary Wolf that appeared in WIRED also captures, well, I think, the views of those like myself who find religious explanations uninteresting intellectually, but have a hard time thinking of Ken Miller and other theistic evolutionists as the enemy.
We atheists tend to write off all believers a little too reflexively as Jerry Falwell wannabes -- I must confess I'm sometimes guilty of it, as well -- but it's important to remember that there are serious thinkers -- Karen Armstrong, who describes herself as a freelance monotheist comes to mind -- who read the Bible and other texts metaphorically and view the natural world from a modern scientific perspective.
I believe it's in the self interest of skeptics to join with religious moderates -- those who don't read the Bible literally -- to protect religious freedom by defending separation of church and state and to keep creationism and its super sophisticated city cousin, intelligent design, out of public schools.
Dawkins is a wonderful writer, but a lousy strategist. Picking a fight now, with those religious moderates who want to defend tolerance and rationalisty, will isolate us and make it easier for the religious right to have its way.
Looking back, while I agree with Orr's conclusions, I don't think he argued for them well in his review. The problem with TGD is not with a lack of "serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology," or with a lack of "effort to appreciate the complex history of interaction between the Church and science," since much of that is irrelevant to Dawkins' thesis, which is simply whether God exists in the first place. Nor is it really that Dawkins thinks that "sophisticated religion is logic-chopping," which all too often it is. The problem is simply that Dawkins makes too many bad arguments, period.
One trouble that I see with doing a good critique of TGD is that it is difficult to point out that Dawkins does a poor job attacking some theistic arguments without also pointing out that Dawkins' problem is a failure to recognize and attack the real weaknesses in those arguments. That brings up the issue that the theistic arguments have weaknesses in the first place, something which someone trying to not overly offend religious readers might not want to do.
I think one of the problems that goes unaddressed in the recurrent flamewars between Dawkinsians and anti-Dawkinsians is the overzealous conflation of religion with theology. A lot more people partake in religion than ever make an attempt to understand the theological ideas that have been tossed up at various points in history. Most people who spout inanities like "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it" haven't even attempted to crack the Bible, let alone the exegetical sophistry of figures like Origen and Aquinas.
The things about theology is that no matter what you do, you can't pin it down. It's immune to whatever you toss at it, so you're essentially playing a game with automorphic liquid goalposts that move on their own. That's why I like the approach of Victor Stenger in God: The Failed Hypothesis, where he pins down the actual claims of the common religious practitioner and shows various ways they can be tested, and shown to fail.
Tyler,
I agree about the difference between religion and theology (and of course, philosophy of religion) and how they are being used interchangeably in this "debate".
As yet, I haven't read Stenger's book (my review copy is apparently in the mail), but it sounds like he is taking on popular religion. Yes?
As yet, I haven't read Stenger's book (my review copy is apparently in the mail), but it sounds like he is taking on popular religion. Yes?
Yes, he does. His actual attack is centered around the notion of a personal god and what observable results that would entail, so in that sense his target is what is popularly believed.
I am as unimpressed with Orr's response to Dennett as I am with his original review, which PZ Myers and Jason Rosenhouse, among others, have fisked at length.
Orr misrepresents Dennett in his very first sentence. Dennett did not complain that Orr held "Dawkins's book to too high a standard" but that he held it to an inappropriate standard. Orr faults Dawkins for failing to address various arcane reworkings of some of the classic "proofs" of God. Orr apparently considers these arguments to be the "best thinking" on the subject, but they are largely unknown outside the small world of professional philosophers, irrelevant to Dawkins' purpose in writing TGD, and not nearly as impressive to Dennett (or, as far as I can tell, the academic philosophical community in general) as they are to Orr. Jason R, PZ and others have made this same point.
Orr has made a minor career out of this kind of "You may be right, but you haven't made your case" shtick. He seems to be the NYRB's reviewer of choice for attacks on religion by professional scientists and philosophers, and he can always be counted on to make soothing noises to religious moderates.