Recently I’ve found myself reflecting quite a bit on religion and critiques of religion such as you find in folks such as Dawkin, Hitchen, Dennett, and so on. I’m hesitant to write this post because religion discussions so often get really ugly in the blogosphere. At the outset, I’d like to say that this post is, in no ways, trying to take up a position with respect to whether God exists, whether religion is good or bad, whether religion should be abolished, and so on. I’ve mellowed on these debates quite a bit as a result of my adventure with OOO. Rather, what interests me here is some of the assumptions that seem to animate the critiques of the new atheists. Here I think the critiques of the new atheists are reflective of a set of assumptions many of us in academia inherit from the representationalist tradition belonging to western thought (incidentally, Alex Reid raises a similar set of concerns today in a very different context). When I refer to the representationalist tradition, I’m referring to that form of theory and philosophical thought that tends to think of social phenomena primarily in terms of representations, beliefs, and meanings. Within this framework, 1) beliefs and representations are the glue that holds people together in societies, and 2) the job of the critic is to evaluate the truth and falsity of beliefs, whether or not they correspond to reality, and the rightness and wrongness of normative principles.
In the context of the new atheists, the question that I’ve increasingly been asking myself is whether it’s true that a religion is primarily or even for the most part about a set of beliefs. Now before my philosophy of religion and theology friends jump all over me in outrage, I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that belief isn’t a component of religion. Clearly it is. Rather, what I find myself wondering is whether it is appropriate, when analyzing religion, to focus on belief as the sine qua non of what religion is. Here, potentially, both the philosopher of religion (of a certain stripe) and the new atheist would be approaching discussions of religion in the wrong way from the outset. In this connection, I’m led to think of Terry Eagleton’s critique of Dawkin’s God Delusion (it was a critique of Dawkins a couple years back, right?). Eagleton castigates Dawkin for knowing nothing of the intricacies of theology and dogma and thereby thoroughly misrepresenting religion and lacking the background to be able to speak intelligently on these issues. Eagleton’s criticism here is, if I’m right, every bit as misguided as Dawkin’s critique. Dawkin largely critiques the beliefs of religion. Eagleton responds that Dawkin doesn’t know what those beliefs are and has therefore targeted a straw man. For my part, I find myself baffled by both of them as, living in the deeply religious and fundamentalist Texas and therefore having a number of deeply religious and fundamentalist students, I’m always struck by the spectacle of one of my highly religious students coming up to me after class (it happens a few times every semester) and talking with animated excitement about the movie they just saw: What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?!. Inevitably I am then treated to an enthusiastic talk about how this film has touched their family so deeply on a spiritual level and how excited they are about it… These remarks coming from students who in papers and in class have waxed poetic about their Christianity. The point? Many believers themselves do not know the theology and dogma of their religion (and here we should not forget the Latin mass practiced before a non-literate lay in Catholicism for centuries).
read on!
If belief can play such a flexible role in religion, then this would suggest that critiques of religion such as those we find in Dawkin, Hitchens, and Dennett risk targeting the foam kicked up by the waves… A poetic way of saying that they aren’t getting it at all. So while I concede that belief is a component of religion, I am not at all convinced that we are talking about the right sort of thing when we talk about religion in terms of belief and evaluate the truth claims of religious belief.
But if not belief, then what? Well for starters, its worth noting that religion is never just a set of claims about being (whether or not God exists, whether we have souls, whether there’s heaven and hell, whether there are demons, miracles, etc). No. Religion is also a set of practices. People kneel, they stand, they sing, they fast, they meditate, they observe holy days, etc. These activities are not negligible or secondary aspects of religious practice, yet oddly they often seem to disappear in discussions of religion that focus on belief as if we can ignore these things altogether, and focus on belief alone. Taking a page from Bourdieu, Foucault, and Lacan, these practices are all “technologies of the self” that form the self in a variety of ways. These practices, these technologies of the self, are generative of certain forms of affectivity (as understood by folks like Massumi) and jouissance that deeply influence our cognitive experience of the world, other people, and ourselves and which play a key role in attachment. When I watch a documentary such as Bill Maher’s Religulous, I am struck, in particular, by the scene involving the Pentecostals, where we see well dressed and ordinary looking people of all races and backgrounds frenetically dancing, speaking in tongues, singing, holding hands, holding each other, and so on. What forms of affectivity are taking place in these activities? What forms of jouissance arise from them? What altered states or forms of consciousness here transpire? These are not negligible questions. If your aim is to break attachments to religion, and your theory is that attachment to religion is the result of believing that it’s claims about being are true, you’re going to miss this whole field of attachment and the way in which it creates a hold on people. You’ll be busy pointing out contradictions, false claims, claims lacking in credibility and historical support, while these people are busy activating affects and jouissance. Your strategy will lead you to miss the target from the outset.
In addition to this, religions are generally pervaded by all sorts of objects. There are organs, temples, silver chalices, robes, incense, funny hats, institutions, groups, pews, and so on. Having been brought up in the Catholic-Episcopal tradition myself, what effect does those hard pews, those somber images and stained glass, that frightening visage of Jesus dying on the cross (often very graphically portrayed), that wine, that bread, that putrid incense, and so on have on the formation of a body, a subjectivity, forms of jouissance, and forms of affectivity? Is there a difference in subjectivity and religiosity between a Catholic church service punctuated by chants (I will never be able to erase the images and sounds of the older women in my church that would chant the Lords Prayer prior to service) and somber organ music of the Bach variety, and an evangelical church service filled with guitar and banjo music, light shows, and occasionally even smoke? I don’t have the answers to these questions. I just don’t see them being discussed (and that might just be my lack of familiarity with literature in sociology of religion and elsewhere). The question would be, however, how these objects might channel persons in particular ways.
But above all, in the focus on religion as a set of beliefs or propositions, I think the new atheists fundamentally miss the social dimension of religion. What is forgotten is that religion is not simply a set of claims about the world, but it is also a set of relationships among people. When a believer entertains whether or not to sacrifice a belief, they are not merely raising the question of whether they should shift from treating one set of beliefs as true to treating them as false– for example, switching from belief in young earth creationism to evolutionary theory –no, they are entertaining questions about their place in a network of social relations involving family, friends, and all sorts of other people. In the suburbs of Dallas, for example, people tend to live very alienated and isolated lives. Back yards are fenced in. Garages are on the back of houses entailing that when you’re fiddling about in your garage you no longer easily encounter your neighbors. People seldom tend to walk out on the sidewalks or even spend much time outside. I get the sense that churches function as a sort of supplement, forming a community that overcomes the problem of communities not forming organically in the cities. It is not unusual for my students to tell me that they and their families spend four to five nights a week at their church. In these circumstances, a shift in belief does not merely entail the revision of a belief system, but also carries the very real possibility of exile (and I mean that in the strong sense), from one’s family, friends, and support network. Heightened awareness of this could lead to both a better understanding of why religious discussions are so often pervaded by such heated affect and why argument has such poor traction in persuading others to abandon particular beliefs. Such awareness of this dimension of religious practice would also lead to a very different set of strategic concerns. Rather than focusing on belief and its truth-value, it might raise questions of how alternative communities, alternative networks, might be formed to soften the blow of exile. When Dawkin, for example, focuses on the truth of belief and all of its negative consequences, he speaks from a well established social position filled with a network of supporters in the form of colleagues, friends, and so on. He doesn’t notice that he’s imploring others not simply to abandon their beliefs, but to abandon their networks… And for what? To live in isolation, loathed by those they love? If this network question can’t be answered and solved, there’s very little that such critiques have to offer.
March 11, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Here is an interesting TED talk about “blue zones,” societies that produce members that live extraordinarily long and healthy lives. It explores the social role of what is usually regarded as a biological issue. When these researchers tried to find the “bluest zone” in the US they found it in a group of 7th Day Adventists in California. The group is ethnically diverse and seem to share nothing in common except their shared faith and place. By simply being a part of this community your physical body ages differently, more slowly.
March 11, 2011 at 9:35 pm
About the last paragraph… I might point out that religion asks you too to leave the unbelivers’s company, so why not the do the same? Well, believe me or not, in some degree it was Dawkins’ book that made me get out of the closet and say No to my girlfriend’s religion and her’s pretensions to play the role of a believer for her family. So taking attitude lead to breaking up in the end (after 7 years relasionship , I refused to marry in the church), and now my new girlfriend (a bit of a feminist anthropologist)doesnt have the same issues. So speaking for myself, yes, you can leave a world behind, there are alternatives for people, and for social clubs.
March 11, 2011 at 10:01 pm
Hey Chris,
I’m not really taking up a position one way or another, but am rather critiquing the critique of religion. As for leaving the company of the religious, I don’t think that’s tenable in a society where people are as entangled with one another as ours is. Not only do I, for example, have all sorts of friends and family who are religious, but all of us work and live among the religious. Epicurus’ Garden isn’t really viable.
March 11, 2011 at 10:16 pm
I think Paul Tillich’s maxim, “God is your ultimate concern,” might be fruitful here. I was also reminded of South Park’s “Go God Go” episodes, which I use in my Intro to World Religion’s course. As an academic who has been reluctant to instruct courses on the New Testament and Christianity for a number of reasons, I have found the “social” dimension to be a fruitful way of contextualizing and situating fundamentalist responses from students, particularly in relation to Evangelical theology. I would recommend David Chidester’s work, both on Christianity and New Religions, as a supplement to your posting. Mahalo nui!
March 11, 2011 at 10:20 pm
I agree with much of this, though I doubt that Dawkins and the rest would deny that this problem of the social networks and practices which sustain religious belief and superstition is a very real one. But since you raise the issue, how do you think we ought to proceed with regard to fighting superstition and irrationalism?
March 12, 2011 at 12:13 am
Ayisha, putting it that way is using Enlightenment language (“superdtition”): “Belief is always the belief of the other.” That’s a not well examined BELIEF. Levi’s argument is trying to examine both theism and atheism within scruffy configuration space. Hats off to that. Dawkins and Pat Robertson SHARE the same BELIEF ABOUT BELIEF. Beware that this is not claiming with some theists that Darwinism et al are beliefs. The problem is the ATTITUDE to belief, which is identical. Belief is treated as reductively and as materialistically as possible.
March 12, 2011 at 12:14 am
“Scruffy”! I mean “a wider”!
March 12, 2011 at 12:24 am
http://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2011/03/beliefs-about-belief.html
March 12, 2011 at 1:14 am
Despite the ridiculous posturing and melodrama of some thinkers such as Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris I really can’t see where they are particularly wrong in their critique of religion. Although I think Dawkins tends to whine and his ‘God Delusion’ was weakly written, I thought Harris’ “The End of Faith” was the most well-written books on religion I have ever read (I know, I know, someone is going to laugh at me and say I’m a tool). Clearly, however, the book already covers some of the points you’ve made. I agree that there is more to a religion than a set of beliefs, but I don’t think that legitimates having obviously insane and harmful convictions about reality. I don’t know, I don’t wax much about religions but I tend to find them distasteful.
March 12, 2011 at 1:17 am
Actually, having just read Tim Morton’s post, I retract my last post. I clearly missed the point of the thread. Carry on.
March 12, 2011 at 1:19 am
Tim, thanks for your comment, but I’m not sure how to respond because I do not understand your point. (I can see how you used the word “scruffy” when you meant to say “wider” though, because I do that all the time: last night I mistakenly told my husband that I wish he had a scruffier penis, for example.)
Anyway, the only point you make that seems relevant to my comment is my use of the word “superstition”, but apart from the fact that I am perfectly happy with using “Enlightenment language”, this is in fact a word Levi himself used earlier today, stating that he shares the goal of fighting against superstition and irrationalism. It is for this reason that I am asking him how he recommends this fight be conducted, given that he maintains that Dawkins et al. miss their target more or less completely.
March 12, 2011 at 1:48 am
Thank you for this excellent post. Jimmy
March 12, 2011 at 2:27 am
Enjoyed your article. I recommend a book written by a UCC minister that covers similar ground.
“Saving Jesus From The Church: How to stop worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus.”
He is part of a group of theologans who make the distinction between the pre Easter Christ who was a community organizer working with the poor, to the God Christ distant and to be worshiped. He talks about propositions and beliefs vs. engagement. It is a well written book that for many is in your face, but with a style that leads to thoughtful reflection.
March 12, 2011 at 3:07 am
[…] Bryant weighs in here, while Timothy Morton does so here. Morton even uses the same term (‘nontheism’) that I […]
March 12, 2011 at 5:31 am
A good book on practices as they relate to religious states: Music and Trance by Gilbert Rouget. He goes looking for an invariant in the musical forms of the world that invoke trance — and finds none.
March 12, 2011 at 10:18 am
Levi,
there are a number of readings in non- or anti- phenomenological study of religions which you might find interesting. A couple of articles which I remember recently bumping into (both related to Latour, and dealing with the agency of ‘external’ or ‘nonhuman’ elements/actors in the construction of ‘religion’) are here and here.
March 12, 2011 at 10:37 am
I think that it can be argued that Dawkins et al have hit the right target in their critiques. If we consider a few factors:
Atheism has a history of opposition to particular forms of theism. The most salient extreme forms of theism throughout the naughties have been fundamentalisms.
Throughout this period popular culture and the public sphere (including the internet) have increasingly become the ‘battleground’ on which religious differences are played out and expressed (e.g. Possamai 2005, 2011 forthcoming; Turner 2007).
It can be suggested that therefore Atheism/science had to play the game or it could become lost in the noise. One example is dispute over the teaching of evolutionary theories in schools. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a particularly good popular cultural example of a rebuttal.
Therefore I think it we could see the new atheism as an appropriate response to the perceived problematic theism of its time.
The new atheism rallied atheists, causing them to enter the public sphere and express counter views.
Atheists have also begun creating their own social support systems such as affiliate groups (see Pasquale 2010), parenting literature (see Manning 2010), scholarships (Freedom from religion foundation), summer camps (Camp Quest), celebrations (ie Darwin Day, A week on facebook) and much more.
I have my doubts that the new atheists ever really thought they were converting the religious. However, they have done an excellent job of getting the atheists out of the woodwork and expressing their veiws. I think that from a sociological perspective this is a more important point than whether their arguments attack common religious views or not.
March 12, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Levi,
I really enjoy seeing this post, because it’s right up the alley of the stuff I’ve been working on for a good while now. I think it’s worth noting that, while philosophy and often even theology tend to treat religion solely in terms of beliefs, the idea that religions are much more about practice is already almost a truism in the religious studies crowd. Religion really only becomes solely about beliefs once it is relegated to a private sphere that is in principle supposed to be separated from a secular public sphere, but this separation is a modern Western invention, and even it requires certain kinds of practices to keep it viable (this is more or less the kind of argument made by Talal Asad, for example).
I think one of the big challenges is trying to raise awareness of that perspective within philosophy of religion, which more or less since its inception (in the Enlightenment) has dealt with religious propositions rather than behaviors or relationships. Latour in particular gives us some very helpful resources to combat this tendency.
March 12, 2011 at 7:17 pm
In a way, Wittgenstein was articulating the same point by way of his comments on Frazer.
March 12, 2011 at 9:24 pm
It seems entirely possible that obsessing over belief is a peculiarly Christian and even more specifically Protestant preoccupation. Dawkins et. al. remain more firmly in this tradition then those who would see religion in terms of ritual, practice, etc. (you rightly cite Bourdieu in this vein). Durkheim’s methodological atheism, for example, does not so much rest on rejecting belief as on giving primacy to what we can empirically know from the examination of collective movements. I’ve been repeatedly struck by how lightly the “new atheism” skirts over a rich history of atheistic critiques and modes of studying religion, from Sade, to Marx, to Durkheim, to Bataille, etc. that are far more radical and rigorous than the highly simplistic kind of Christian-Protestant atheism they propose. A proposal a la Sam Harris for morality without God seems highly unoriginal when you look at eighteenth century philosophy–not that originality should be the sole measure of an argument’s worth.
March 12, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Really, the history of the twentieth-century study of religion is filled with thinkers for whom “belief” is only ever an extension of other categories, from the Durkheimians to Levi-Strauss, Geertz, Victor Turner, J.Z. Smith, Catherine Bell, etc. Admittedly these figures represent religion in cognitive rather than practical terms to varying degrees (myth or symbol vs. ritual or performance), but none of them focus on “belief” as the true measure of religiosity.
March 12, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Exactly, Thomas. Whether or not the arguments of the “new atheists” are of merit, they are certainly not new. And I also am wary of the argument that Dawkins et al. are helping to make atheism more visible or publically credible or whatever. Let’s remember that it was forty-five years ago (almost to the day) when none other than Time ran a cover story on the decline of religion – well before their round of evangelizing began.
March 12, 2011 at 10:19 pm
[…] enjoyed reading Object Oriented Ontology theorist Levi Bryant’s new post on the Problem with the New Atheists. Bryant suggests that folks like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris may be […]
March 13, 2011 at 12:42 am
Or we can follow Bataille and say that religion responds to a reality, but one that consistently evades capture by religious discourse (or as I’d suggest, religion, at least in the West, is interested in keeping at a distance). Secularism then is the opportunity to explore this reality rather than foreclose it entirely.
This has nothing to do with God, gods, or miracles, and its articulation can be obstructed by limiting religiosity to belief, or in this case, affect. This isn’t to say that affect isn’t a component, which I agree with, but it doesn’t exhaust religious phenomenon. And isn’t it correlationism to suggest so much?
As always, my position as an amateur scholar subjects me to confusion and undisciplined reading, so I apologize if I misread terms or intent.
March 13, 2011 at 1:51 am
Perhaps OOO will allows us to consider each religion as being mutant objects that continually redefine and defend themselves in every context possible. Notice that throughout history, Christianity has never been one Christianity but continual mutations that seem invicible to reason (in fact, often enlisting reason just to survive). Perhaps even now this entire conversation against New Atheists is placing us defenselessly back in the thrall of religions.
March 13, 2011 at 4:06 am
Michael:
“Let’s remember that it was forty-five years ago (almost to the day) when none other than Time ran a cover story on the decline of religion – well before their round of evangelizing began.”
A lot has changed in 45 years, the secularization thesis is no longer as strong as it used to be. Some are suggesting a multiple modernities paradigm, others a desecularization thesis. Theorists have also put forward the idea that the secularization thesis created a ‘blind spot’ in both academics and western societies. This meant (within this perspective) that the changes occurring in religion over the last 40-50 years have been understudied until recently.
The political activity of the religious right, 9/11 and an increasing salience of religion in the mainstream media could all be seen as challenges to the secular/atheist world view. These factors, whether real or constructed have been felt to occur in the time period since the Time magazine article you mentioned.
Even the tactics of the new atheists reflect a move into popular culture (for another round perhaps?). There is also evidence of terms being redefined, such as atheism itself, spirituality and religion. I suspect that these changes are being enacted through a dialogue that is mostly occurring on twitter, youtube, blogs and news articles partially in response to the original new atheist books.
March 13, 2011 at 8:11 am
Latour mentions somewhere that Christianity is about the transformation of a personality through the use of a certain mode or key of discourse. For Latour, there are different keys or modes of discourse that function well for actants.
Simply put, Dawkins and Harris just don’t like the kinds of personalities that religious modes of affectivity produce. The New Atheist wants to be the rival of religiosity, competing for an ecological niche. The New Atheist wants to prove herself capable of stealing religiosity’s light.
I myself disdain the focus on belief in the critique of religion. My favorite, and perhaps the best, exposition of how terribly these critiques miss the mark is Norbert Samuelson’s book Revelation and the God of Israel. Samuelson takes the reader on a truly remarkable journey, a journey which weaves the best of Maimonides, Buber and Rosenzweig into a realization that non-conceptual encounters over the eons continue to yield the astounding magisterium of religious affectivity. Samuelson was educated at Oxford, Princeton, and Indiana University, where he was a A.N. Whitehead scholar, among other things. Well worth the read, I assure you!!!
The question of non-conceptual encounters is very interesting to me.
March 13, 2011 at 8:25 am
Whitehead in his book Religion in the Making stated: “The doctrines of rational religion aim at being that metaphysics which can be derived from the finest insights of mankind’s most supernormal experience.”
Most Christians don’t realize how far out their theology is. It really is mind boggling to try to understand who Christ must be in order for the theology to be ‘true’. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, claim that Jesus had no recollection of his existence as the Archangel Michael prior to his 29th year. Suddenly, Jesus started having realizations of who he really was. I mean, talk about a supernormal experience!!!
Combine this with the teaching Christ provided that we, too, are destined for such supernormality, and what you get is a psychedelic recipe for the indefinite future of social affectivity.
The reason I mention this is precisely because Whitehead’s approach to constructive critique of religion is entirely apt for our contemporary sensibilities. The New Atheists might win me over if they acknowledged that they themselves are not sure what constitutes “mankind’s most supernormal experience.” If we can all agree on this much, the future will be brighter.
Let the sun shine.
March 13, 2011 at 9:54 am
Levi! These two posts and their inter-relatedness—so thrilling! Even more than speaking in tongues, the Christian practice of intercession, which, as I recently witnessed it, involved prostrating oneself and groaning from the depths of one’s being, is the motherlode in terms of pointing me to a new (possibly testamentary) reading of Huck Finn. This may not be original thought, but I’m not a Twain scholar (thank God!), but just think how many times and in how many ways Huck serves as a go-between, especially with and on behalf of Jim. It’s in that service, that groaning effort, a kind of prayer is issued forth. I can’t wait to have time to think about this more.
But what I also wanted to rush to say about criminality and religious practice–A lot of (one would be too many) young people are being dragged into the criminal “justice” system and incarcerated for the crime of being young, wanting to party, and having no access to public transportation. Many of the prisoners on Sherrif Joe Arpaio’s chain gangs in Maricopa County are three time DUI offenders. Imagine if every church used their vans (they all have at least one in the parking lot) to offer free rides to drunken youngsters when they leave bars and clubs too intoxicated to operate a vehicle safely. Hey, they can slip ’em a Gospel tract for their pains if they must; just keep the kids safe and out of jail for God’s sake.
So looking forward to The Democracy of Objects. (Today I saw a cockatoo! (and a koala!!))
March 13, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Alan,
Much of what you point out is exactly the point I wanted to make – viz., that in the last half century religion, secularization, and anti-religion have gone through much change, little of which has (I would argue) directly to do with the efforts of the popular New Atheists. And I don’t think that in the late ’60s the secularization thesis was strong and become less so; rather, it may have seemed stronger then than it seems now, because events and cultural shifts between now and then have demonstrated the continuing resilience and relevance of religions.
Drew is on to something when he suggests taking religions to be mutant (or mutating?) objects that are continually redefining themselves – I’ve actually argued elsewhere that religions are best grasped in terms of change and difference. One thing I would add, though, is that Christian religions, for instance, have never (or at least rarely) been Christian against reason. Once again, the supposed dichotomy between between religion and reason is a recent invention that falls wholly within the framework that Levi calls into question here.
March 13, 2011 at 9:17 pm
@Lareb, indeed see Frank Cioffi’s Wittgenstein on Freud and Frazier.
for related notes from the field see:
Click to access web
March 14, 2011 at 10:44 pm
Chris Hedges makes some interesting points on the new athiests:
March 16, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Very interesting article, excuse me for using my poor english to express some thoughts on the “new atheism”. Having read the dawkins book and followed their campaing in its grand lignes, i am perplexed of the naivity and the exposure of their project.
1) You correctly pointed out that when talking about religion and god, we are not talking only for a system of beliefs but primarily for series of actual collective practices (and i would add of a nuclear of signification which organises these practices). What consequences can we tire from this point?
I would say that i) You can’t treat these practices and oppose to them in a purely negative way as dawkins and co. is appearing to do so, and you can see it through the accent that the term atheism has taken in their campaing. Most importantly though they seem to treat theism as just as a false image of the world( the term false belief that is employed by dawkins is very telling, i leave aside for the moment the inherent problematic of this term, and how can a brutal distiction entre fiction and reel can be emloyed by someone who is doing philosophy in the 21st century) which just has to be corrected for its rational inconsistancies . In this way they bring to my memory what we used to call naif marxism, c’est-à-dire people that believe that you just has to say that nation, religion are modes of false consciencess(illusions), explain their ideological status, and you are finished with them as anyway you already had identified the real which shapes the human consciousness . But two world wars were more than convincing that these illusions are forces that arm men with very real weapons and very real bullets to shoot very real other men, and that someone who think that he has to explain the rational inconstencies (or destroying effects)of nationalism to explain what nationalism is( or is not from this point of view)is himself in delusion.
2) This gets to another point. In this kind of discussion we use to treat the actual religious practices and beliefs as somekind of a relic of some distant past. This is completely naive, religious gestes are producing themselves in front of our eyes in the present world, in france for which i can speak empirically for ex. ,next to the new modes of the catholic line i am stricken to also meet various modes of spirituality , naturalism , Conspirancy theories, teleologies and why not of scientism, all clearly religious in nature, which are PRODUCING themselves rapidly in all age groups (mostly the younger ones though).
This has to mean that when we speak religion, we have to keep in mind that we are not talking about some abrahamic relics but for the lives of our contemporains right now( something that your article envisioned), and that more a century after Freud, Marx et Nietzsche just repeating that theism is an illusion(with many banners this time) is at the very least a weird strategy.
Retaking my crude analogie with naif marxism, i have to add that marxism was at the same time putting forward an actual collective project and practice. What is the project and activity of the new atheists? Is it really just a negative process as solely the term atheism points? I would say not, call me cruel if you want but in their attitude i feel strongly the “do your job and let us intepret the world” of the clerks that Spinoza was describing in his tractatus theologico-politicus. This accusation will maybe seem to a lot grossiere but cant really this discours be reduced to : Go to work , make kids , some of you get in our institutions to work with us, and wait for dennet and his friends to explain to you how your ‘qualitative experience” is an illussion, but nevertheless continue operating.
March 17, 2011 at 12:03 am
The Ethics of Becoming Imperceptible:
Click to access trent-final.pdf
March 22, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Riffing off of Maine’s comment, maybe looking at the New Atheists and their counter-parts in many ways, the spiritual-but-not-religious tendency that expresses itself with much of the same materialistic discourse – maybe we should be looking at them like Marx looked at the “contemplative materialists” in the Theses on Feuerbach.
March 23, 2011 at 2:45 am
Thank you for the post. It was a pleasure to read, and you certainly provided some food for thought. I now wonder what sort of social networks and relationships *could* be developed by atheists to promote their cause. There are a few humanist organizations out there, but many seem very non-personal and oriented toward attacking religious beliefs, not building humanist relationships.
December 1, 2011 at 8:01 pm
[…] enjoyed reading Object Oriented Ontology theorist Levi Bryant’s new post on the Problem with the New Atheists. Bryant suggests that folks like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris may be […]