Says the theologian, “Post-modernity, sometimes called After-Modernity neither involves a flight from reason back into faith, nor a rejection of reason in favor of faith, but rather an attempt to get beyond the impasse. It is interesting that most of the adamant and now famous atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens are in fact unreconstructed modernists, who have simply taken for granted the rationalist paradigm for analyzing reality set in motion by Descartes and his Enlightenment successors. Somehow they have not gotten the memo yet that Western culture has moved on to post-modern ways of thinking about reality and its nature.”
What do you think? Are you an unreconstructed modernist atheist who is stuck on the tradition of rationalism?
I’m an atheist because I don’t see a reason to believe in a human construction that is horrendously outdated. Everything we study and understand is found to be natural, so there is no need to invoke the supernatural. It’s also a ridiculous idea to me. So what does that make me?
Just so you know, what I quoted is not the main thrust of the blog post. I think what he is claiming is that an atheist like Dawkins clings to Enlightenment ideals while ignoring the critiques of postmodernist thinkers.
Can you meaningfully define “natural” (i.e., without saying “not supernatural”)? I think the theologian is implying that Modernism is horrendously outdated.
What’s all this I hear about famous athletes like Darryl Dawkins and Bob Hitchens being unreconstructed modernists? When were they ever constructed anyway and who did the unconstructing?
The Chocolate Thunder! My man, I kind of liked to think of myself as a miniature version of him. My girl friend at the time refused to play along.
Bob Hitchens? Who’s that?
I think "postmodernism’ was invented by professors in the Humanities who needed to get tenure. In the humanities one is required to write a book (or two) to get tenure, and some poor graduate student is required to read it.
You may not know this, but they both attended the same college at Oxford. And, they both have an extremely tedious digressive writing style, stringing along clauses, complicating the logical tracing of their arguments - as if they expected applause at the end.
(You may applaud now)
The same question can be asked about some who claim to be people of Faith, especially those who oppose civil rights for the GLBT community and support war and gun ownership.
Doesn’t that represent a flight from reason? Though it’s not truly back into faith, more into idolatry.
I have read more about Dawkins than I have read of his works. I am reading one of his books at the moment and it confirms many of the negative things I have read about him.
He is a bad advertisement for atheism, and is viewed as a rather controversial and divisive figure by many atheists, humanists and sceptics. There was a very interesting article “dismantling” him in the recent issue of Fortean Times.
Whatever his qualifications and experience as a scientist, he cheats when he presents an argument in favour of something he wishes to prove. He appears to be every bit as bigoted and fundamentalist as some of the religious figures he attacks. He has some interesting ideas, but you need to fish them out carefully from the general slapstick of his writing.
Definitely bigoted slapstick. Charlie Chaplin played a great dictator, you know. It can be done.
And many atheists dislike Dawkins because he provides encouragement for those people who like to lump all atheists together as a single group and start their questions “do atheists…” rather than “do some atheists…”.
Dawkins is admired by some atheists as a spokesman for “the cause”. Some other atheists think there is no “cause”, just private opinions.
Just as some Christians say “Hate the sin, not the sinner,” I would say - “Dislike the religion, not the religious.”
And I would certainly not argue that all religions are equally bad. A belief system doesn’t have to be literally true to have some value to individual believers and to society as a whole.
Dawkins abuses his “stature” as a scientist to give the impression that his bigoted, aggressive and often poorly-constructed arguments carry more weight than they do. He often sets up a very simplistic view of religion, and attacks that, and then, having knocked down his Aunt Sally, he makes the classic “some = many = most = all” mistake (deliberately, I think).
On the other hand, he would be an absolute whizz at the highland games or a pancake party, because he’s quite a remarkable tosser.
Charlie Chaplin played a great dictator, you know. It can be done.