Guardian 'Face To Faith' article
Aug. 27th, 2007 11:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philosoraptor42A Guardian article decides to make a note of Atheistic Theology. Only problem is he think dropping a single name is enough to make a big point. Unfortunately he just ends up sounding a bit under-read.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2146483,00.html
1. From what I can see (and I may well be looking in the wrong places) Ernst Bloch only wrote "only an atheist can be a good Christian". It was Jurgen Moltmann who added "but only a Christian can be a good atheist".
2. He also makes the mistake of assuming that Dawkins sees religion as 'nothing but' a delusion. Of course, Dawkins notes in his book that there were alternatives to the word Delusion, but he would have had to used odd technical terms. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Dawkins is theologically literate enough to express what he actually did mean. He is always confused on the way the philosophical and theological positions are laid out (unsurprisingly, as they are fraught with complex if not outright obscurantist terminology), so he tends to wish to just be blunt in the hope of cutting the gordian knot (much to the irritation of those of us who've been trying to carefully untie it).
In any case characterising Dawkins as someone who dismisses religion as nothing but a delusion, is a bad start....
3. "The resurrection of God presents a challenge to those such as Dawkins and Hitchens because they continue to perceive religion as an opiate which is handed out by states and their tame priests and mullahs in order to keep people quiet, rather than as a home-grown product consumed by people in order to dull the pain not only of global economic disadvantage but also of a deep, yet unidentifiable sense of loss."
False dichotomy. It is both. The preachers exist because they answer a demand on the part of the populace.
Surely it is not a problem for Dawkins to admit that religion is a cry of despair? The preachers become a problem because rather than healing that despair, they encourage it and rub salt into the wound. The religious groups thrive on this despair and that is what is most frightening about the whole system.
4. He ends up on a note not dissimilar to Thomas J.J. Altizer's 'Christian Atheism'. The idea that the problem with religion is that it seeks an 'eternal return' (not to be confused with Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence). This 'eternal return' seeks to return us finally to some kind of 'primordial beginning' (the 'garden of Eden' so to speak). For Altizer the 'Death of God' and the 'Eternal Recurrence' are both Christian confessions of faith, where God sacrifices his transcendence in order to give absolute value to the 'here and now'.
I hope this doesn't sound too weird.
Anyway, I thought the writer had their hearts in the right place, but they need to read a bit more widely. Firstly, they could do with reading Dawkins' book, rather than just the title. Secondly, they could do with reading a few more Atheist Theologians rather than pretending that Ernst Bloch was the only guy to think of this kind of stuff....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2146483,00.html
1. From what I can see (and I may well be looking in the wrong places) Ernst Bloch only wrote "only an atheist can be a good Christian". It was Jurgen Moltmann who added "but only a Christian can be a good atheist".
2. He also makes the mistake of assuming that Dawkins sees religion as 'nothing but' a delusion. Of course, Dawkins notes in his book that there were alternatives to the word Delusion, but he would have had to used odd technical terms. Unfortunately, I'm not sure Dawkins is theologically literate enough to express what he actually did mean. He is always confused on the way the philosophical and theological positions are laid out (unsurprisingly, as they are fraught with complex if not outright obscurantist terminology), so he tends to wish to just be blunt in the hope of cutting the gordian knot (much to the irritation of those of us who've been trying to carefully untie it).
In any case characterising Dawkins as someone who dismisses religion as nothing but a delusion, is a bad start....
3. "The resurrection of God presents a challenge to those such as Dawkins and Hitchens because they continue to perceive religion as an opiate which is handed out by states and their tame priests and mullahs in order to keep people quiet, rather than as a home-grown product consumed by people in order to dull the pain not only of global economic disadvantage but also of a deep, yet unidentifiable sense of loss."
False dichotomy. It is both. The preachers exist because they answer a demand on the part of the populace.
Surely it is not a problem for Dawkins to admit that religion is a cry of despair? The preachers become a problem because rather than healing that despair, they encourage it and rub salt into the wound. The religious groups thrive on this despair and that is what is most frightening about the whole system.
4. He ends up on a note not dissimilar to Thomas J.J. Altizer's 'Christian Atheism'. The idea that the problem with religion is that it seeks an 'eternal return' (not to be confused with Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence). This 'eternal return' seeks to return us finally to some kind of 'primordial beginning' (the 'garden of Eden' so to speak). For Altizer the 'Death of God' and the 'Eternal Recurrence' are both Christian confessions of faith, where God sacrifices his transcendence in order to give absolute value to the 'here and now'.
I hope this doesn't sound too weird.
Anyway, I thought the writer had their hearts in the right place, but they need to read a bit more widely. Firstly, they could do with reading Dawkins' book, rather than just the title. Secondly, they could do with reading a few more Atheist Theologians rather than pretending that Ernst Bloch was the only guy to think of this kind of stuff....
