Dissident Heart wrote:Authority can be legitimate or illegitimate....
Ultimately, no matter where we place our authority, or from whom or what we derive our directives, it is we who establish the rank and order of power...it is we who say "this is my bedrock, here is my foundation, here is my truth and law for living and for dying"....pushed hard enough, all we really have is "because I say so".
Although if it is "we" who establish the bedrock, we are then empowering an authority, which is the way it's supposed to work in a democracy. Ultimately, any argument from authority depends on the perceived legitimacy or power of that authority, sometimes on one alone, sometimes in combination. We all assess this quality when deciding whether to comply. Whether the authority is a god or or a government makes no difference; we will assess the authority's claim to legitimacy and its ability to wield power. Hitchens says that he has always respected the authority of history and culture, and that it is therefore not easy for him to assert that religion has rested on a false foundation. Look at all the brilliant people who had been involved that put him to shame intellectually and even morally. He makes his decision based on the legitimacy of the authority, which he has found wanting.
The veil of Oz is too easily projected onto them: the other team, the other guy, those people over there, those tribes, that other party, religion, nation, school of thought, etc....we, us and ours and the way we do things around here: our group and party and nation are free of that nonsense and delusion...unlike the rest of those uninitiated, uneducated, unenlightened, unclean and ordinary- we have braved the tearing of the veil, because (unlike them) we are better, brighter, stronger. True, religion is made up by ordinary mammals...but, we, we are far from ordinary.
The boast you describe so well, if made by Hitchens, would indeed as you imply be the height of solipsism. If Hitchens or anyone else claims that there is an automatic positive benefit stemming from non-belief, I will join you in deploring that. To the extent that he might say or believe that atheists are less likely to screw things up or to be screwed up, he would be wrong. But I don't get any strong sense of that from his wiriting here.
Perhaps no more in vain as those courageous souls who have stood up to tyranny and despotism, abuse and domination, saying no to social injustice and personal degradation...demanding respect and care and honor and rights to fully participate in the structures and systems of power in their world...risking their lives and the lives of their families...struggling for a better world of ecological sustainability and economic fairness...perhaps all of this, too, is in vain: foolish and naive and dangerously ignorant of how power actually works?
You're not saying this runs counter to Hitchens, though, I assume.
If Shakespeare was a closet Catholic...then perhaps there is something about the Catholic faith that permeated and breathed life into the 'greatest writer about love and tragedy and comedy and morals'? IF Shakespeare felt it necessary to practice and worship as a Catholic...it seems that would say more about his moral saliency than our ponderings of his value and importance. And why should we expect the Koran or Talmud to be understood or shared in the same fashion as Shakespeare?
Well, Shakespeare's religion is speculation. It's not a solid that we really can talk about, nor do we need to in order to appreciate his plays. Hitchens' comment about moral saliency needs to be understood against the common objection that without religion we would have no guidance as to what is right or wrong or how to know the good life. In Shakespeare, Homer, Milton, Joyce and so many others we do have a treasury of moral literature that can serve as well as various scriptures.
What about the the understanding that comes from practicing and participating in a religion? In other words, simply scrutinizing religion will provide undoubtedly valuable and important wisdom...but at what point does the nurturing, tending, and cultivation of religion offer wisdom as well?
I think you are assuming that he has a fight to pick on this basis. From his title, you would think so, but look further.
Here, the value of religion is best in disclosing its own abuses: in other words, religion works best where it confronts its own ignorances and misunderstandings. Hitchens is identifying the best of religion, at least here, in its Prophetic pathos of confronting falsehood, injustice and violent imposition of dogma and doctrine.
A point for him?
CHitchens:
However, a moment in history has now arrived when even a pygmy such as myself can claim to know more--through know merit of his own--and to see that the final ripping of the whole disguise is overdue. Between them, the sciences of textual criticism, archeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious myths to be false and man-made and have also succeeded in evolving better and more enlightened explanations.
DH wrote:Found the light! Free at last!
He is not making the utopian declaration that you are mocking, is he? It seems quite al lot more limited than that to me.
CHithcens:
The loss of faith can be compensated by the newer and finer wonders that we have before us, as well as by immersion in the near-miraculous work of Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Tolstoy and Proust, all of which was also "man-made (though one sometimes wonders in the case of Mozart). I can say this as one whose own secular faith has been shaken and discarded, not without pain."
DH wrote: I am perplexed as to what newer and finer wonders have done to help us deliver ever more destructive forms of explosives and poisons across the globe...pumping more and more toxins into our air and soil and water and food supplies...terrors of war and ecological devastation have not diminished, but only increased...why we should trust or find authority in the 'man-made' elements of existence requires a faith at least as extraordinary and miraculous as our less enlightened forebears.
I think that by "newer and finer wonders" he is referring to such basics as evolution and other discoveries of science, and is explicitly contrasting them with the the way that religion explained the natural world. These are not "man-made" elements, actually. I agree it's wise to be skeptical--or scornful-- of claims that we've reached a millenium through all of our progress. We still have a status quo that was no different when religion ruled and likely will not be different when it doesn't.