Servile Conformist

The Most Influential Books That Have Impacted Me: # 3

3. Sir Richard Francis Burton's 'Personal Narrative Of A Pilgrimage To Al-Madinah and Meccah'

Burton is no philosopher in a strict sense, but he is a keen student of the human subject. An accomplished solider, explorer, linguist, and translator he also has amateur hats in anthropology (particularly in ethnography) and religious studies. The guy was a genuine badass with too many exploits to cover here, but one I need to mention is his trip to Medina and Mecca disguised as a Muslim so he could study the Hajj pilgrimage. That is some serious gumption.

Burton tried several disguises before settling on portraying himself a Sufi Sheikh hailing from Afghanistan. How an Englishman could trick other Afghanis into thinking he was a fellow countryman is beyond me, but he reports that he did it on several occasions. Using tricks of folk magic and hypnotism, he earned his keep as a healer, helping perfectly healthy people overcome imagined ailments with some soothing words, tonic water, and a variety of other harmless placebos he had become acquainted with as “oriental curiosities”.

Burton’s writing seems to take Horace’s advice of: “You’ll write wonderfully, if by a deft selection make a familiar word look new.” To the current social sciences, his writings are just the antiquated scribbling of a Victorian Englishmen stuck in his times, but his wit and style are hard to match. His talent of observation cuts through a lot of the cross-cultural static that would inhibit most Western observers of Arab subjects. Consider this selection on the natives of Medina (from Chapter 21):

 

The Most Influential Books That Have Impacted Me: # 1 & 2

One of meat-space friends posted a question on a social media site that asked everyone what are some of the most influential books you’ve ever read. He wanted people to understand “influential” as having the most impact on your worldview. Asking this type of question always invokes a bit of story telling because important books are often embedded into the context of our lives. I’ve decided to list 5 books that have made a major impact on me.

1. Marcus Aurelius’ 'Meditations'

This is the first philosophy book I read from front to back and actually felt I had a decent understanding of. I picked up a Penguin edition of the Meditations at Bagram Air Force Base for free (from some box of library books donated “4 TEH TROOPS”)  late 2004 on my way to some hovel called Asadabad. It was lost on me then I was just a stones throw away from the ancient site of Kapisa founded by Alexander the Great. It also would have been meaningless to me that the hovel I was traveling to was the birthplace of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī, the great 19^th century Islamic thinker.

 

Sentenced For Life: Book Review

‘Sentenced For Life’ by Jo Ann Schneider-Farris was a chance find for me and being a fan of exit narratives from either religions or religious organizations, I really couldn’t pass this up. It’s the story of a nominal Jewish woman who ends up joining the controversial missionary juggernaut “Jews for Jesus”, her experiences inside the organization, her eventual disillusionment and then her inevitable exit.

I want to be upfront to readers of this review who are considering buying this, the quality of writing leaves a lot to be desired. I don’t mean that Mrs. Schneider-Farris writes poorly, it is just that this book badly needs a good editor. The story often meanders down rabbit trails providing details that are simply unnecessary to the implied subject; Mrs. Schneider-Farris’ entry and exit from Fundamentalist Christianity and Jews for Jesus. Reading the book is similar to learning about someone’s life story over a series of lunches, lots of needless digression and awkward transitions from one subject to another.

You won’t find much theology in this book either, Mrs. Schneider-Farris is fairly upfront that theology just isn’t her thing and doesn’t have the patience for it, so you will not read about Christian proof-texts for Jesus being the messiah nor any sort of counter exegesis offered from the Jewish perspective. Being the text hound that I am that was probably the biggest disappointment for me.

Despite it organizational flaws and lack of theology you will find an honest narrative written in a simple prose. Mrs. Schneider-Farris has a high EQ, and provides a very personal and educational lesson about how she got roped into Jew for Jesus. For those readers already familiar with tactics used by high control religious groups, you’ll see those tactics employed to great effect on Mrs. Schneider-Farris, from love bombing a lonely college girl to the signing of demanding contracts which makes acceptance from the group dependent on servitude.

I would not recommend this book, but those who are still interested in it are bound to get a few useful nuggets out of it.

Behold: Thy Ministry Man.

I came across this video on Facebook the today from a Christian apologist on Youtube who goes by the name Mr. Ministry Man, and I was fascinated by it, though not for the content itself:

 

Scholars Misbehaving: A Mormon Flavor (Part II).

Dr. Peterson begins to shift gears and now starts going on the offensive by offering a two pronged internal critique of secular and naturalistic worldviews:

 

Scholars Misbehaving: A Mormon Flavor (Part I).

Anyone involved in Mormon Studies is keenly aware just who Daniel C. Peterson is, a quick look at his publication history at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship website shows a sustained effort in the area of Mormon Apologetics for two decades. Dr. Peterson is not merely limited to apologetics and faith promoting ventures however; he has also participated in the translation and publication of ancient philosophical texts under the auspices of the Maxwell Institute, a worthy contribution to a variety of fields covering History, Philosophy, and Near Eastern studies.

The industry of Mormon Apologetics rarely comes into contact with atheism or secularism, so when I came upon an essay written by Dr. Peterson entitled “Reflections on Secular Anti-Mormonism” that was published in the FARMS Review (2005), I was eager to read Dr. Peterson’s thoughts. Now it is important for me to mention that Dr. Peterson presented this essay that same year at a FAIR conference (Youtube video here and transcript here), because what I discovered both angered and disappointed me.

The essay itself isn’t enlightening, informative, nor entertaining, which is what disappointed me. Dr. Peterson’s criticisms of secular thought are shallow, but I found them largely unremarkable and seem to come straight out of the usual apologia-lite style of general Christian Apologetics like Lee Strobel or Norman Geisler. What had angered me was Dr. Peterson’s use (abuse really) of Albert Camus as a means to launch some of these criticisms.

 

Faith of the Gaps

I picked up a new book recently from my local used book store, by Alister McGrath and I came across this [1] startling passage:

The atheist believes that there is no God, but his position is a matter of faith rather than fact. He cannot prove beyond all reasonable doubt that God does not exist, just as the Christian cannot prove with total conviction that God does exist: Both are positions of faith.

I hate comments like this, I really do, and it pains me even more when a person with McGrath’s education makes it. This is not something a theologian should ever put into print.

I call this line of observation the “Faith of the Gaps” and it usually crops up when someone reflects on the disputations that go on between Atheists and Christians, and it usually comes from the Christian camp. I think it is a terrible mistake, it seems like Christians like McGrath are trying to level the playing field by attributing faith to the Atheist like faith is something to be ashamed of, or like faith some kind of concession of defeat for the Atheist.

In any case, McGrath makes some serious epistemological presumptions here without ever drawing his reader’s attention to them. First, he uses language that almost seems to suggest infallibilism when it comes to knowledge, but more charitably, I think he just intended a high level of justification, something akin to mathematical or very strong scientific proof, whatever belief does not reach this level of justification must cover the remaining distance with faith.

I was under the impression that faith (well placed, in any event) was a virtue within the body of Christ, and McGrath equates both positions as one of faith, but fails to make any sort of qualitative distinction between the faith in the risen Jesus Christ, the Living God and faith in the negation of the metaphysical position of Theism (and let’s be fair, that is all Atheism strictly entails).

From a biblical perspective, I would think that there is more to faith than mere intellectual assent to some body of propositions, but the intimacy with God reflected by both paragons of faith within the Hebrew Bible, Abraham and Job.

What is more troubling, if faith is to be a virtue and it operates as McGrath stated, then it would be more virtuous for a person to be less knowledgeable about sacred things, so the amount of their faith could increase. I’m sure that is not what McGrath intended with this passage, but it is a sad consequence of his own words.

 

 

　

[1]Studies in Doctrine, page 131 under ‘God and His Critics’, 1997 Zondervan Publishing.

 

 

 

Scholars Misbehaving: Dawkins

No matter how you feel about Richard Dawkins, you can’t deny he plays an important role in the contemporary public discourse about religion and that his book ‘The God Delusion’ (hereafter, TGD) is an important text to understanding that discourse.

Personally, I find Dawkins’ books about biological science to be wonderful. As someone who doesn’t have a great education in the physical sciences, I find him to be invaluable resource in that respect. Sadly, I cannot repeat that praise for TGD, even though it is arguable that TGD is his most important work.

Whenever the TGD comes up in conversation, I usually express my dislike for the book, which in turn, causes people to challenge me to articulate what I find wrong with TGD, so this (and other upcoming) blog posts is a result of that.

On page 2, in the Preface to TGD, Dawkins states the following:

“Perhaps you have been taught that philosophers and theologians have put forward good reasons to believe in God. If you think that, you might enjoy Chapter 3 on ‘Arguments for God’s existence’ - the arguments turn out to be spectacularly weak.”

Now this is a strong claim, one that I wouldn’t make. I may be an atheist and remain unconvinced by theistic arguments, but I would never judge them to be spectacularly weak. Also note he singles out both philosophers and theologians, which means Dawkins intends to engage the best arguments from the professionals.

The arguments addressed in chapter 3 are: Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways, Ontological Argument, Argument from Beauty, Argument from personal experience, argument from scripture, Argument from admired religious scientists, Pascal’s Wager, Bayesian Arguments, the chapter is 32 pages long (77-109).

What immediately jumps out to me is the actual lack of modern arguments. For example, one of the most famous philosophers of religion is Richard Swinburne, who not only is a theist, is also a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He taught at Oxford from 1985 till 2002, a published highly influential books defending the coherence and rationality of theism.

What I don’t understand, is why Dawkins doesn’t deal directly with Richard Swinburne? He obviously knew of him, knew he’s a philosopher and a faithful Christian to boot. He mentions Swinburne in the next chapter concerning Divine Simplicity, so I don’t see any excuse to omit his work from Chapter 3. Dawkins’ oversight does a disservice to the atheist readers he seeks to inform, because he essentially leaves his fans completely defenseless to any theistic thinker who bothered to read the modern literature (or taught by an apologist what to say in response).

In The ‘Existence of God’, Swinburne readily admits that the variety of traditional arguments for God’s existence, when considered alone and deductively, are not sound. Swinburne’s strategy is to asses the arguments for theism along inductive lines, using two categories for assessment: First is a C-inductive argument, which raises the probability of a hypothesis, and P-inductive argument, which makes a hypothesis more probable than not. Swinburne then picks out several arguments that he feels make a good C-inductive arguments, and the conjunction of these arguments make for a P-inductive argument for theism.

Swinburne’s strategy has been in print since 1979, and what even frustrates me even more, is that the probability calculus that Swinburne employs is Bayes’ Theorem, which is the last thing Dawkins addresses in Chapter 3, but instead of dealing with Swinburne, Dawkins’ target is Stephen Unwin. So…ignore the Oxford Philosopher with a strong reputation and target a risk management consultant? Really?

Chapter 3 is such a painful read, for example, on page 106 Dawkins observes:

“But of course that final estimate can only be as good as the original numbers fed in. These are usually subjectively judged, with all the doubts that inevitably flow from that.”

Anyone who has spent anytime closely examining arguments for theism from actual scholars (and not  apologists), you become use to their unassuming and modest attitude. Swinburne takes into account  subjectivity of the various evidentiary values, and even makes honest concessions (on page 289, my copy of The Existence of God comes from the revised 91 edition):

“All this so far is very imprecise, but, as we have seen we just do not have the criteria for very precise estimation of probabilities in science or history or most other fields. However I now suggest that it is reasonable to come to the following qualitative judgment about the force of the evidence so far considered…Theism does not have a probability close either to 1 [100%] or 0 [0%], that is, on the evidence considered so far, theism is neither very probable nor very improbable. It does not have a probability close to 1 because it does not have predictive power.”

Swinburne doesn’t make any radical claims, like Unwin apparently does, and spills much ink in justifying his values, and that deserves a fair treatment, if not a close and detailed one.

Dawkins is a total let down:

 

The Khlysty

In his masterful biography of Rasputin, Edvard Radzinsky gives an account of the melding of Christianity with the traditional pagan religion of the Rus:

Christian churches in Russia were often built on pagan holy places. The pagan gods that the princes had forced the people to repudiate lived on unseen. The pagan god Volos, for example, whose untrammeled power was manifest, according to pagan beliefs, in the alternating fecundity and destruction of the natural world, was transformed into ‘God’s servant, Saint Vlasy the Miracle Worker’. The pagan god of thunder, Perun, was supplanted by the prophet Elijah who caused the storms to rumble. And the pagan delight in nature, the pagan worship and deification of nature, remained in the people’s souls. The alacrity with which they agreed after the revolution to destroy their own great Orthodox temples at behest of the Bolsheviks is strikingly similar to the ease with which they smashed and burned their pagan holy places at the order of the princes.

Entire regions lived through that thousand-year period in a blend of paganism and Orthodoxy. And the ancient sorcerers and saintly healers existed side by side, as well: the healers healed, and the sorcerers cast spells or warded them off.

Siberia and the Trans-Volga were the centers of that strange ‘Orthodoxy of the people’ (pages 34-35).

It’s always interesting to stumble upon global religions like Christianity or Islam melding with local religions to produce a unique expression of the parent faith that is not found in other regions (that isn‘t the product of missionary work). The United States has plenty of examples for me to choose from that range from Seventh Day Adventism, Latter Day Saints (Mormons), and the Nation of Islam immediately come to mind. In South America, one comes across an interesting blend of Roman Catholicism and strains of Yoruba. A Russian example would by the Khlysty (whips).

The Khlysty is a religious expression that is hard to get a hold of and understand, but the group started with Daniil Filippovich and Ivan Suslov, with Filippovich taking on the mantle of ’Lord of Hosts’ and Suslov being ‘Christ son’. In Khlysty tradtion, Suslov was crucified on (at?) the Spassky Gate not once, but twice, and arose from the dead both times, sometime hereafter Filippovich and Suslov returned to heaven, never to be seen again. During this ascent, the Holy Spirit comes to earth and reinstalls a new Christ within some more bodies.

The Khlysty had an odd notion of asceticism, that attempted to remove the sins from the flesh via abstaining and self mortification by beating themselves with whips. Radzinsky does note the following about the Khlysty:

…‘Rejoicing’, the principle Khlyst rite, derived from the pagan sorcerers and shamans; Khlyst ’rejoicing’ was merely the latest mixture of paganism and Christianity. It was during ‘rejoicing’, in the view of the Khlysty, that the Holy Spirit descended upon them. And then the members of the sect would try to conceive as many new ‘Christs’ and ‘Mothers of God’ as possible. That conceiving took place in a state of frenzy preceded by Khlyst dancing (page 40).

It is said that the Khlyst believe that when they sweat during such wild dancing and whirling (Sufi Whirling anyone?), they reproduce the same sweat Christ produced in the Garden of Gethsemane. Radzinsky himself witnessed ‘rejoicing’ and I think it’s worth producing a snippet of it here:

But at this point the old man stopped his whirling and cried out wildly, ’Brothers! Brothers! I feel it, the Holy Spirit! God is within me!’ And he began to prophesy, shouting incoherent sounds mixed into which were the words, ’Oh Spirit!’ ’Oh, God!’ ’Oh, Spirit Lord!’ After that began the main communal rite of ’rejoicing’, or general whirling and dancing (page 41).

Radzinsky didn’t see any wild orgies, but leads us to think that this didn’t happen because he was there. Reading this account, what immediately leaped to mind were examples of this kind of ‘Spirit Intoxication’ here in America:

 

I wonder what practitioners of these types of worship/ritual think of their actions from a more global view? Are they aware of far away groups with contradicting beliefs obtaining the same effects? If so, how do they contextualize their ritual in such a way that they feel confident that it’s the Holy Spirit present, but not at rival groups? Or is the Spirit present at both? I also how members of a very localized faith like Latter Day Saints or Seventh Day Adventists deal with the high level of ethnocentricity in their theology.

 

Reasonable Book, Basic Philosophy.

Reasonable Atheism: A Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief by Scott F. Aiken and Robert B. Talisse turned out to be a major disappointment for me, though that is no fault of the authors. This book is not intended for atheists or theists with a background in philosophy, but for folks whose entire working knowledge of the Atheist/Theist conflict comes from the best seller list in the NYT.

The first two chapters were very slow going for me, and probably the part of the book I least enjoyed. I think the authors took great pains to make the book readable and understandable to any high school educated person who happened across this book, and the result is something that reminds me of a introductory lecture where a Professor has to guide the class by the hand through the basics argumentation. The substance was not a problem for me, and I can hardly hold it against the authors for taking this approach, but I think potential readers should be aware that you might be covering a lot of ground that seems like common sense to you.

The commentary on the “New Atheists” is where the book begins to earn it’s keep. At several points I felt like clapping for the authors, as they made their case against the ‘New Atheist’ approach to dialogue, which is a combination of aggression and ignorance. Their finest example has to do with the Ontological argument, which was by far, my favorite part of the book, and how this argument is useful is gauging people’s understanding of the more complex issues involved. If you don’t understand the Ontological argument, and do not have a reasoned response to it, your atheism is more than likely to be poorly justified.

I must confess that my biggest disappointment with the book is the poor way in which the authors discussed Psalm 53. I can’t help but charge the authors here with blatant eisegesis. For example, on page 67 the authors state, “ The Psalmist affirms that those who deny God’s existence are fools. And fools, according to the Psalmist, are both morally and intellectually corrupt.” Checking my own various sources, I found plenty of biblical scholars who would disagree with the author’s interpretation. Now most commentary is actually going to be found in Psalm 14, which is nearly the same Psalm (in fact, all my sources referenced the reader from Psalm 53 to Psalm 14). My Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV, 3^rd edition, page 785) states, “ Fool, a moral category, not an intellectual one. The fool denies not God’s existence, but divine governance of the world and attention to humankind.” I next checked a Jewish translation (Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Press Society, 2004) and their understanding of the passage is so different from the authors’ understanding that the beginning of the 1^st verse reads, “The benighted man thinks, ‘God does not care.’” (page 1269). The commentary discusses the Hebrew word ‘naval’ (translated as benighted) and the implications of the word is described as,” [benighted], is a very strong term that can carry moral overtones…”. I even turned to my “The Apologetics Study Bible (2007)” and consulted their commentary (page 800) on this passage and it read, “…the fool here (naval) is neither a simpleton nor an ignorant dullard, but instead is a practical atheist, His denial of God may not be overt, but in his heart he lives as if God does not exist.”

Now, the authors’ main points don’t rest on their faulty interpretation of Psalm 53, it is merely a lead in to their points about public perception of atheism and the perceived lack of morality, but I found it annoying and it colored the rest of my reading.

After dealing with the New Atheists, the book launches into the meat of things, and essentially recreates a survey course in ethics, raising classic objections to Divine Command theories (Euthyphro Dilemma) and introducing the reader to the various normative ethical theories that don’t rely on God. After laying that ground work, the book moves into contemporary politics, with an interesting “Moral Test” and the end.

All things considered, the book is solid (if a little boring) and I think the best description I could give of this book, is that if I had to teach a survey course on atheism, this would be my textbook. I have plenty of classmates who are fellow atheists and science majors who take their cues from the likes of Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers, whose tutelage leaves them with convoluted forms of naïve empiricism and physicalism, there is much they could learn from Aiken and Talisse.

I’ll end up giving my copy away, and I’m warning all armchair philosophers away, but this book is a perfect gift for people interested in the atheism/theism conflict, but uninitiated into the grand discipline of philosophy.