Angry Atheists

[poliphilo]

A happy atheist- by which I mean an atheist confident in their unbelief- wouldn't continually be banging on about God the way Dawkins and Hitchens and Pullman do, they'd just let the matter rest and get on with their cheerfully Godless life, wouldn't they?

I read a piece by Dawkins the other day. (Thanks to chiller  for the link. ) It's very ecrasez l'infame- very shrill. Dawkins thinks he's got the Pope on the run and is giving chase with loud cries.

Philip Pullman is just about to publish a book about Jesus with a provocative title. I doubt that it'll be any good. Fictions about Jesus- for or against- never are. I enjoyed the Dark Materials trilogy, but the anti-God stuff was clumsy. As Eliot said of Matthew Arnold, Pullman is dealing with a subject "in (which) reasoning power matters, and it fails him."
 
I've been an atheist. I've dreamed that dream. The one where the bastille is tottering and you put just a little more weight on the crowbar and something gives and the masses come staggering out into the light of pure Reason. It's not going to happen.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I think Pullman has more chance than either Dawkins or Hitchens because of two things:

Firstly, humans are inherently story telling creatures, and he's approaching the atheism argument by telling stories which subsume and replace belief.

Secondly, because behind everything that Dawkins, Hitchens and their ilk have to say, you can hear the not so sub-text "If only you were as clever as me, I wouldn't have to explain this to you."

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

and yet Dawkins is not astute enough to recognise his own special pleading. He does not seem to realise the comforting role religion plays in the lives of people around the world whose lives are hard and toilsome. He would diminish the value of cultures who celebrate religious rituals - as if he is not part of any such culture, as if he is above culture.

I'm not 100% down on Dawkins. I do believe he is sincere and passionate - but fails to understand how he comes across sometimes.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd have hated to be taught by Dawkins; that lack of empathy would have made him an awful teacher.

And my gut feeling about your 'comfort' argument is that Dawkins would say that it's irrelevant compared to the damage religion has done and continues to do.

But then I think that Dawkins would have kicked Tiny Tim's crutch away "for his own benefit" - after all, if Richard can stand on his own two feet, why can't Timothy?

Though to be fair to him, I've read interviews with him where he acknowledges that he is a creation of Christian culture and art, as much as anyone else.

"I'm a cultural Christian" - http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2034

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Pullman is a fine story-teller. I wish he'd stick with what he's good at. I think he undermines his art with his preachiness.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I was a big fan of Pullman's for quite a while. However, after the way he forced the Dark Materials trilogy into an unhappy ending, when there was a perfectly good happy-ish ending staring him in the face, I realised that he'd done that once too often and I went right off him. I also disliked the way he keeps killing off really nice, likeable characters. Once is tragic, but when it seemed to keep happening in different stories, I started to feel emotionally manipulated. :(

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I loved His Dark Materials- until I started thinking about it. Yes, it is manipulative- and it doesn't make a great deal of sense- either as a story or as cosmology. Pullman attacks C.S. Lewis for using his books to push an ideology- but I think he is guilty of exactly the same thing.