SKJ Today

Enough With The New Atheists Already

May 6, 2010 // 1 Comment »

David B. Hart’s assessment of the New Atheism is a must read for believers and non-believers alike. If one has an exceedingly low tolerance for feisty rhetoric, then this piece will be tough to slug through, though still well worth the effort. For example:

The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today’s most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel…But how long can any soul delight in victories of that sort? And how long should we waste our time with the sheer banality of the New Atheists—with, that is, their childishly Manichean view of history, their lack of any tragic sense, their indifference to the cultural contingency of moral “truths,â€� their wanton incuriosity, their vague babblings about “religionâ€� in the abstract, and their absurd optimism regarding the future they long for?…I am not—honestly, I am not—simply being dismissive here. The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe.

It’s not as though Hart has no appreciation for atheism. On the contrary, he recognizes that

…Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture—some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.

What I enjoyed most about Hart’s reflection was the marked appreciation for Nietzsche, who comes off as a figure who (rightly in my opinion) deserves our admiration and gratitude:

Above all, Nietzsche understood how immense the consequences of the rise of Christianity had been, and how immense the consequences of its decline would be as well, and had the intelligence to know he could not fall back on polite moral certitudes to which he no longer had any right. Just as the Christian revolution created a new sensibility by inverting many of the highest values of the pagan past, so the decline of Christianity, Nietzsche knew, portends another, perhaps equally catastrophic shift in moral and cultural consciousness. His famous fable in The Gay Science of the madman who announces God’s death is anything but a hymn of atheist triumphalism. In fact, the madman despairs of the mere atheists—those who merely do not believe—to whom he addresses his terrible proclamation. In their moral contentment, their ease of conscience, he sees an essential oafishness; they do not dread the death of God because they do not grasp that humanity’s heroic and insane act of repudiation has sponged away the horizon, torn down the heavens, left us with only the uncertain resources of our will with which to combat the infinity of meaninglessness that the universe now threatens to become…Because he understood the nature of what had happened when Christianity entered history with the annunciation of the death of God on the cross, and the elevation of a Jewish peasant above all gods, Nietzsche understood also that the passing of Christian faith permits no return to pagan naivete, and he knew that this monstrous inversion of values created within us a conscience that the older order could never have incubated. He understood also that the death of God beyond us is the death of the human as such within us. If we are, after all, nothing but the fortuitous effects of physical causes, then the will is bound to no rational measure but itself, and who can imagine what sort of world will spring up from so unprecedented and so vertiginously uncertain a vision of reality?…For Nietzsche, therefore, the future that lies before us must be decided, and decided between only two possible paths: a final nihilism, which aspires to nothing beyond the momentary consolations of material contentment, or some great feat of creative will, inspired by a new and truly worldly mythos powerful enough to replace the old and discredited mythos of the Christian revolution (for him, of course, this meant the myth of the Ãœbermensch).

Posted in Atheism, Culture, Modernity, Philosophy, Religion

Dealing Honestly With Slavery

April 29, 2010 // No Comments »

Henry Louis Gates set off what is sure to be a heated discussion about slavery and reparations with his Op-Ed piece entitled “Ending The Slavery Blame Game”, which appeared last Friday in the NY Times. In addition to dealing with heinous acts committed in the past by the United States and European colonial powers, Gates insists we must grapple with the role that Africans played in the slave trade:

…that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others…The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World were enslaved by Africans and then sold to European traders. The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred. Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.â€� The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.

In a recent open response to Gates, University of Illinois Professor Barbara Ransby openly challenges Gates, pointing out what she sees as his use of revisionist history:

Professor Gates’ selective storytelling and slanted use of history paints a very different picture than does the collective scholarship of hundreds of historians over the last fifty years or so.  A learned man who commands enormous resources and unparalleled media attention, why would Gates put this argument forward so vehemently now?  It is untimely at best.  At a time when ill-informed and self-congratulatory commentaries about how far America has come on the race question, abound, Gates weighs in to say, we can also stop “blamingâ€� ourselves (‘ourselves’ meaning white Americas or their surrogates) for slavery.  The burden of race is made a little bit lighter by Gates’ revisionist history. It is curious that the essay appears at the same time that we not only see efforts to minimize the importance of race or racism, but at a moment when there is a rather sinister attempt to rewrite the antebellum era as the good old days of southern history.  Virginia Governor Bob McConnell went so far as to designate a month in honor of the pro-slavery Confederacy….  As we know, ideas have consequences. And misleading narratives that fuel and validate new forms of denial and given cover to resurgent forms of racism should not be taken lightly.

Both pieces are sure to be the source of controversy and spirited debate. However one weighs the arguments of these two prominent American intellectuals, we ought to be thankful for their mutual willingness to engage in frank, honest and thoughtful open reflection on race. It’s something we need much more of in American public life.

Click here for a copy of Professor Ransby’s essay.

Posted in Culture, History, Politics, Race

Thinking Sensibly About Net Neutrality

April 21, 2010 // No Comments »

John C. Dvorak wrote a really nice piece on Net Neutrality the other day, and another informative one was published in yesterday’s Op-Ed section of the NY Times. On one side of this debate there are those that advocate trust in the market, on the other are those that want to trust the government to protect us from exploitative practices of telecommunication giants. I don’t think we should trust the market or the government here. We certainly need some safeguards to stop exploitative practices that actually work against market competition rather than promoting it (for instance Verizon banning Skype on their broadband so you have to use their client for a similar service). But the F.C.C. as the internet police may be a medicine that does more harm than the disease. When I think of all the ridiculous censorship cases in radio and T.V. that occurred over the past decades, I shutter to think what will happen when these regulators get their hands on the internet. Yikes!

Posted in Culture, Politics, Technology

Is Internet Dating Conducive To Falling In Love?

April 3, 2010 // No Comments »

More from Eva Illouz’s outstanding essay. Illouz goes on to look at the modern statement of disenchantment and what it does to romantic relationships. Our need to understand everything in terms of enlightened rationality pushes us attempt to understand the phenomenon of falling in love in largely psychological, psychoanalytic, or biological terms. These scientific explanations “undermine the view of love as an ineffable, unique, and quasi-mystical experience, ultimately undermining both its absoluteness and uniqueness.”

Love no longer becomes ineffable and mystical because when you fall in love, you’re really either reliving an early developmental psycho-drama, or you say someone that flooded you with a combination of dopamine and testosterone and host of other biochemical treats, or you’re falling prey to thousands of years of evolutionary development and your genes have told you the one in front of you is the one who can best guarantee their survival. Love falls prey to the scientific rationality just like every other sphere of life:

Scientific modes of explanation, psychological, biological, evolutionary, by their nature tend to be abstract and extraneous to the categories of felt and lived experience. In contrast, premodern religious explanations that viewed intense love as the manifestation of spirit possession or as a temporary loss of Reason still resonated with the felt experience of the subject. Scientific explanations reduce love to an epiphenomenon, a mere effect of prior causes that are unseen and unfelt by the subject, and that are neither mystical nor singular but rather located in involuntary and almost mechanical, psychic or chemical, processes. With the prevalence of scientific modes of explanation, it is difficult to hold onto the view of love as a unique, mystical, and ineffable feeling. In that sense, love has undergone the same process of disenchantment as Nature: it is no longer viewed as inspired by mysterious and grand forces but rather as a phenomenon in need of explanation and control, as a reaction determined by psychological, evolutionary, and biological laws…The overall effect of scientific interpretive frameworks on love is both deflationary and reflexive. They dethrone love of its transcendental status, making it instead a psychological or physical force, working beyond and beneath the concrete particular experiences of specific individuals. They also create a strong unreality effect,  making actors doubt love’s reality and explicitly attend to the underlying real causes for their love. [emphasis mine]

Add to all this scientific reductionism of love the phenomenon of the internet and things really get interesting, or depressing depending on your point of view.

In premodern cultures mate selection involved a lot fewer choices. Most people weren’t incredibly mobile, so they had limited partners to choose from. They often would up picking the first good candidate, with good being determined by a host of criteria including “dowry size, a candidate’s personal or family wealth and reputation, education, and family politics.” But again, with few options, the standards weren’t nearly as high, nor were the expectations of the relationship. And now…

Two main differences in the modern situation strike even the casual observer: the premodern actor looking for a mate seems a simpleton in comparison with today’s actors, who from adolescence to adulthood develop an elaborate set of criteria for the selection of a mate. Such criteria are not only social and educational, but also physical, sexual, and perhaps most of all emotional. Psychology, internet technology, and the logic of the capitalist market applied to mate selection have contributed to create a self-conscious, manipulable personality, who uses an increasingly refined and wide number of criteria, presumably conducive to greater compatibility. Psychology in particular has greatly contributed to defining persons as sets of psychological and emotional attributes, themselves submitted to the imperative of compatibility. Thus what has become a hyper-cognized, rational method of selecting a mate goes hand-in-hand with the expectation that love provide authentic, unmediated emotional experiences.

So we go through a rigorous scrutinizing process to select our potential partner, one more rationalistic than anything in history, and yet once we find the partner we want to settle down with, we expect that we will have “authentic, unmediated emotional experience” the kind that flow from a less rationalistic and more mystical understanding of love itself.

Now consider the $900 million dollar online dating industry:

By enabling users to investigate a vast number of options, the internet encourages the maximization of partner selection in unprecedented ways, in stark contrast to the methods of premodernity. Maximization of outcome has become a goal in and of itself. For example, many respondents to an open-ended questionnaire about the uses of Internet dating sites declared the choices available were so large that they would get in touch only with people who corresponded very precisely to their diverse aspirations. Moreover, the majority of respondents reported that their tastes changed in the course of their search and that they aspired to more accomplished people than they did at the beginning of the search. Clearly the case of online dating shows that actors use elaborate rational strategies to achieve their romantic desires, thus confirming Smelser’s and Alexander’s claims that computer technology has a strong rationalizing effect: the gradual permeation of the computer into the pores of modern life deepened what Max Weber called the rationalization of the world.

Once again, the process of selecting a partner for a romantic relationship is completely disenchanted. It is as rationalistic and technologized as anything else in modern culture. And yet out of such a process we expect some ineffable and mysterious that is exceedingly emotionally gratifying.

Earlier on in the essay Illouz quotes Sex in the City’s Candace Bushnell, as she epitomizes the contemporary approach to love:

When was the last time you heard someone say, “I love you!” without tagging on the inevitable (if unspoken) “as a friend.” When was the last time you saw two people gazing into each other’s eyes without thinking, “Yeah right?” When was the last time you heard someone announce, “I am truly, madly in love,” without thinking, Just wait until Monday morning?

Bushnell expresses, “a thoroughly self-conscious, supremely ironic, and disenchanted approach to love.” And when she expressed it, we all probably have a sense for what she means. This is because, in Illouze’s eyes, we are steeped in a rationalistic culture that drowns us in irony. Irony “is the trope of the person who knows too much but refuses to take reality seriously.” “Modern romantic consciousness” is thus thoroughly ironic “because it is saturated with knowledge, but it is a disenchanted knowledge that prevents full belief and commitment.” If indeed “love” is a modern religion as Illouze claims, presumably because we approach the search for it despite all the rationalization with the unswerving devotion of a zealot, “it is a peculiar one indeed, for it is a religion that cannot produce belief, faith, or commitment.”

Posted in Culture

What do the Fathers of Conservatism and Communism have in common?

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Eva Illouze begins a recent essay in The Hedgehog Review entitled “Love and It’s Discontents: Irony, Reason, Romance” with the following quote from Edmund Burke:

All the pleasing illusions that made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life…are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our weak and shivering nature, and to raise it to a dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd and antiquated fashion.

Illouze points out that Burke here  “anticipates what would become one of the chief sources of the dynamism and discontent of modernity, namely the fact that beliefs—in transcendence and authority—become accountable to Reason.” The gifts of imperial reason wind up, however, being more than we can bear:

The scrutinizing of social relations by the implacable gaze of Reason can only tear down the harmonious web of meanings and relationships on which traditional power, obedience, and fealty rested. For only lies and illusions can make the violence of social relationships bearable. To be tolerable, human existence requires a modicum of myths, illusions, and lies. Put differently, Reason’s indefatigable attempts to unmask and track down the fallacies of our beliefs will leave us shivering in the cold, for only beautiful stories—not truth—can console us.

She then moves on to point out the strikingly similar insights that Marx shares with Burke:

Marx, the most forceful heir and defender of the Enlightenment, curiously concurred with the ultra-conservative views of Burke in his famous dictum: “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profane, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.” Marx, like Burke, views modernity as a “sobering of the senses,” as a violent arousal from a pleasant if numbing slumber and a confrontation with the naked, bare, and barren conditions of social relationships. This sobering realization may make us more clever and less likely to be lulled by the fanciful and vain promises of the Church and of the Aristocracy, but it also empties our lives of charm and mystery, and of a sense of the sacred. Knowledge comes at the price of desecrating that which we revered. Thus Marx, like Burke, seems to think that cultural fantasies—not truth—make our lives meaningfully connected to others and committed to a higher good. Although Marx neither rejected the new empire of light nor longed to return to the defunct rituals of the past, we can detect in him the same Burkean dread of what lies ahead for a humanity in which nothing is holy and everything is profane.

Illouze goes on to point out the ambivalence that is at the heart of modern culture. Moderns claim to be “free of the shackles that had fogged the mind and consciousness,” at the same time longing for that which they claim to be free from: “a sense of the sacred and transcendent and the very capacity to believe.”

So we’re left as moderns in what Weber calls the perennial state of “disenchantment”.

Disenchantment does not mean simply that the world is no longer filled with angels and demons, witches and fairies, but that the very category of “mystery” comes to be disparaged: for, in their impulse to control the natural and social world, the various modern institutions of science, technology, and the market, which aim at solving human problems, relieving suffering, and increasing wellbeing, also dissolve our sense of mystery. The vocation of scientific work is to solve and conquer mysteries, not to be under their spell. Similarly, capitalists whose principal wish is to maximize their gains, often disregard and undermine those values—religious or aesthetic—that limit economic activity. Precisely because science and economics have considerably expanded the limits of our material world, helping us to resolve the problem of scarcity and making Nature yield to human needs, the gods have deserted us. What in an earlier age was governed by faith, personal fealty, and charismatic heroes, becomes a matter of calculable means. But this process toward rationalization does not eliminate all manifestations of passion; rather, it generates attempts to restore, even if vicariously, orders of experience dominated by fervor and passion.

So whether we’re at a tea party or a coffee party, neither will offer us an enchanted evening, which is perhaps what we long for most.

Posted in Culture, History, Modernity

A Really Thoughtful Reflection On The Long Term Implications Of Health Care Reform

March 24, 2010 // No Comments »

David Brooks wrote a great reflection on the current Health Care legislation, the history of the animating spirit behind it, and some of the long term considerations it raises about America’s future.

In Brooks eyes, the “Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of personal freedom and economic dynamism…For a similar period, the Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of fairness and family security.” Brooks is a conservative who used to write for the Weekly Standard, not an Obama devotee. What I consistently admire about his writing is his ability to see things from a number of different perspectives. Such intellectual empathy is what engenders healthy and fruitful political discourse. Without it politics becomes an all or nothing game, strike that, war, waged by the forces of light against the legions of doom and darkness.

In a column written last week before the passage of the historic health care bill Brooks had this to say about the importance of understanding the other:

Human beings, the philosophers tell us, are social animals. We emerge into the world ready to connect with mom and dad. We go through life jibbering and jabbering with each other, grouping and regrouping. When you get a crowd of people in a room, the problem is not getting them to talk to each other; the problem is getting them to shut up…To help us in this social world, God, nature and culture have equipped us with a spirit of sympathy. We instinctively feel a tinge of pain when we observe another in pain (at least most of us do). We instinctively mimic, even to a small extent, the mood, manners, yawns and actions of the people around us…To help us bond and commit, we have been equipped with a suite of moral sentiments. We have an innate sense of fairness. Children from an early age have a sense that everybody should be treated fairly. We have an innate sense of duty…As a result of this sympathy and these sentiments, people are usually pretty decent to one another when they relate person to person. The odd thing is that when people relate group to group, none of this applies. When a group or a nation thinks about another group or nation, there doesn’t seem to be much natural sympathy, natural mimicry or a natural desire for attachment… Group-to-group relations are more often marked by calculation, rivalry and coldness. Members of one group sometimes see members of another group as less than human: Nazi and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi, Sunni and Shiite.

As I pay attention to my own tweets, Facebook comments and antagonistic exchanges with those whose political sympathies differ from my own (and the sidebars I have with politically kindred spirits about “those people”), the words of Brooks cut deeply.

Brooks concluded his critical column on heath care reform with the following estimation of the challenges ahead for us as a nation:

The task ahead is to save this country from stagnation and fiscal ruin. We know what it will take. We will have to raise a consumption tax. We will have to preserve benefits for the poor and cut them for the middle and upper classes. We will have to invest more in innovation and human capital.

To rise to the occasion such realities present we’ll all have to do a little more listening.

Posted in Culture, Politics

Are You A Progressive…?

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Find out now. That’s right, if you subscribe to an idea, you must subscribe to any ideology that has ever subscribed to it as well, and to every possible negative consequence remotely implied by said ideologies when you carried to absurd extremes.

Posted in Culture, Politics, Religion, Television, Video

Why Ronald Reagan would be run out of a Tea Party and other conservative quips…

March 3, 2010 // No Comments »

Last night television provided some interviews of interest for political junkies. Jay Leno marked his return to The Tonight Show by having Sarah Palin as his first guest. Meanwhile Stephen Colbert welcomed back NY Times columnist David Brooks. Palin was typical Palin and Brooks was typical Brooks. Both were entertaining and one was substantive. All in all, great entertainment. 

Posted in Culture, Politics, Television, Video

Evangelicals The New Internationalists?

February 28, 2010 // 1 Comment »

Came across a great column (http://nyti.ms/9gISFi) byNicholas Kristoff this morning about evangelical relief efforts. If more Christians were as Christlike as Kristoff maybe secular skeptics would be tempted to take the Gospel more seriously. Here’s a nice concluding quote from the piece:

If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.

Posted in Church, Culture, Evangelicals, Mission, Politics

Does The Tea Party Qualify As A Political Movement?

February 27, 2010 // No Comments »

Bill Maher tackes this question in recent episode of Real Time.

Posted in Culture, Politics, Video