My friend Josh Schrei wrote a stinging response to a post by Christopher Hitchens writing on Huffington Post. Josh is a full time marketing director and a part time writer, activist, critical thinker, and student of Indo-Tibetan history and philosophy. His work focuses on the dissection of all-too-common memes in China-Tibet propaganda and American political and religious thought. Josh's response to Hitchens is below:
Christopher Hitchens is Absurd
by Josh Schrei
Christopher Hitchens’ hack scholarship on the subject of religion is utterly inexcusable, and his latest absurdity on Huffington Post firmly cements him as having no place in serious theological debate.
Hitchens’ first and most egregious gaffe is his statement that all religions view the history of humankind as starting several thousand years ago.
“Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has…made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story.”
Any two-bit religious scholar knows that Buddhists and Hindus count time in kalpas, or segments of millions of years, and that they firmly believe the earth was created billions of years ago. There are many prominent Hindu scholars, in fact, who posit that some of the best loved Hindu legends from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are in fact tales from Neanderthal times. The religious cosmology of the Ancient Mayans included a mathematically accurate calendar spanning hundreds of thousands of years. Vast areas of history and religious experience are completely overlooked because — like most atheists — Hitchens is incapable of understanding that for most of human history and in most cultures, science and religion were actually one pursuit.
Hitchens classic argument — that science brings us good things like reason and light and objectivity and human rights and newborn puppies while religion keeps us shackled like slaves in the dark – is an obtuse track that does no justice to the vast and varied history of global theology. Human rights, for example, which Hitchens assumes to be a result of western science and reason, first took root in recorded history in the Mauryan Buddhist monarchy of King Ashoka, in which torture was outlawed. The adherents of Jainism, a religion which Hitchens is probably woefully unaware of, practice non-violence and non-harming to an extreme measure. Ethical practices have always been intertwined with religious faith. Conversely, atheistic power structures — from barbarian hordes to Stalinist Russia and Maoist China — have been responsible for nearly as many atrocities as the religious structures Hitchens condemns.
But the fundamental problem with Hitchens argument is not in his vilification of the power structures of world religions — for god knows (sic) that these structures could use an overhaul — but in the classic and perennially obtuse atheist’s argument that they have science on their side and religion doesn’t.
Only in the western mind does the existence of deity contradict science, and truth be told, not even there. There is nothing in western scientific thought that denies deity. Most scientists, from Newton to Darwin to Planck to Oppenheimer, believed in deity. And there are clear — and ever more defined — places in quantum physics where religious thought and scientific thought overlap. Modern-day atheists, however, have come to assume that if one is “rational” or “scientific” it means that one does not believe in god. Victims of the western Church-Science split, these atheist casualties are so spooked by the atrocities of religious power structure that they are unable to do any serious study of the history of human thought on God.
In many traditions, religion and science have always been and do remain inextricably linked. Indian history, for example, contains a vast body of incredibly sophisticated scientific/academic literature on god, concepts of god, consciousness at it relates to god, the human body and human thoughts and emotions in relation to god… and, in the case of Kashmiri Shaivism for example, quantum physics as it relates to god. The concept of spanda in Kashmiri cosmology is one of the most intellectually complex and sophisticated views on divinity ever put forth. Abhinavagupta — the brilliant architect of much of Indian thought– penned theistic texts over 1,000 years ago that contain scientific truths that physicists are just now confirming.
Most atheists I’ve encountered, Hitchens included, have an extremely limited concept of what God might even be, as they exist in reaction specifically to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god as revealed by through current religious power structures.
I am all for reforming religious structures. But the logical leap from reform of religion to abolishment of all belief in deity is a fool’s leap. Sadly, in many of his writings, this is a leap that Hitchens takes all too often. I do believe that somewhere lurking beneath the gas and bile is a genuinely smart person — would that he would take the time to afford his subject matter the care, attention, and multiplicity of voice that it deserves.
Read Josh's writing at The Schrei Wire.
Follow Matt Browner Hamlin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mbrownerhamlin
And what we know today, we owe to rational thought. Every step of the way, religion has fought this and every step of the way, we have continue to learn...that god is not up in the clouds, that satan is not in the forest, that seizures are not caused by demons, that tsunamis are not caused by angry deities. Rational and free scientific inquiry has taught us this, not faith.
Now, if you wish to say that mankind is spiritual and seeks transcendent moments, no problem. We all still believe in things that matter. The atheist position is that believing in things that are merely old superstitions,is unhealthy for humanity as a whole and retards our progress in this life.
I can only guess what meaning you assign to the name "God." What would you accept as "physical evidence" of . . . that? Of what, exactly, do you want proof? What do YOU think people refer to when they speak of "God?" What do YOU believe, or disbelieve? and Why do you accept an unsatisfying understanding as the only possibility?
On a more positive note . . .
You could think of God the same way you think of Inspiration, wisdom, consciousness, love, creativity, transcendence, and so on. Direct experience of these "things" is overwhelming evidence for their existence, but no amount of argument, proof or evidence is equal to the experience. The experience is not an argument, a mathematical verity or a physical artifact, the experience IS Inspiration, wisdom, consciousness, love, creativity, transcendence, and so on.
When you can provide "physical evidence" for the existence of these things . . .
Of everything mystical and all "miracles" explained in the Bible.
> You could think of God the same way you think of Inspiration, wisdom, consciousness, love, creativity, transcendence, and so on.
Bollocks. You *could* do that if you never critically read the Bible. The God of Moses is a vengeful, angry God...read your "good" book more closely.
> but no amount of argument, proof or evidence is equal to the experience
Exactly. Because it is all what you *wish* it espoused.
> When you can provide "physical evidence" for the existence of these things . . .
For chemical reactions in your brain? We already can...
Science incorporates new data and testable hypothesis that can contradict the theories of past. Religion is based off infallible dogma.
Astonishing lack of understanding of the religious experience of many people.
We are not "victims" of any church-science split. It is not due to any tragedy that we do not believe in your notions of god.
And quantum physics has nothing do with religion or religious thought. You sound like one of those snake-oil salesmen like the Author of the "Secret" and "What the bleep do We Know". Amateur
minds talking about science and concepts they have no understanding of at best, and at worst they are charlatans using the confusion and lack of knowledge concerning such concepts by the public to make a quick buck.
And India has it's own science vs religion movement, headed by groups who seek to discredit holy men and educate the public on the such issues.
Oh and most of the scientists and thinkers who believed in diety, believed in "deism". They did not believe in a god that interacts with the world at all. Most of all, they were not religious! That's like calling agnosticism a religion.
That's right. It's limited to not believing that gods exist. That includes whatever interesting or nebulous definition you decide to use for the word "god".
I will try again: "That is why, in my opinion, Hitchens and Dawkins come across as such spiritual lightweights and utterly uncompelling. They are criticizing a cartoon god who only doesn't not exist in their own minds."
I don't have to research the history of religion to understand any science. I do study religion because it fascinates me that people accept anything their elders tell them, for no apparent reason. You can't understand history without studying the religious forces that shape it.
You said that most atheists have "...a limited concept of what God might even be..." I have NO concept, because I have no reason to believe there could be a God. Hitchens has his own thing going. Atheists just don't want the myths to be a part of their life. Don't try to prove the concepts of religion that tell us how to live - - prove the existence of a divine force. Then, I'll look at the myths in a different prospective.
That's a key part of what's being discussed here: the veiling of reality with prejudicial concepts. Religion does it; science does it. Science allegedly focuses on what can be proven experimentally, but this "proof by consensus" works in the objective-empirical realm, only. You might reasonably ask: "What else is there?" There's the infinity of awareness accessed and experienced by meditators and yogic practitioners for hundreds if not thousands of years (and from all paths; Christianity has its mystics, Judaism has its Kabbalists, Islam has its Sufis, and so on), which transcends the duality veiled by language concept and empirical experimental truth. Anyone can verify this for themselves - but it usually takes some time (a few months at minimum) of the right kind of daily meditation, to get even a glimpse of it. The existence of divine force is always proven in experience, and it is 100% replicable, by all. Saying that divine force must be proven empirically limits the range of experiment, not the actuality of divine force.
"like most atheists ... Hitchens is incapable of understanding that for most of human history and in most cultures, science and religion were actually one pursuit."
This is not what Hitchens says: look to his article: '[religion] was our first attempt as a species to make sense of the cosmos and of our own nature, and [...] continues to ask "why".' Clearly Hitchens believes that the religious and scientific impulses DO have something in common here.
Hitchens most important point, vis-a-vis religion versus science and reason is that science and reason progress by doubt and questioning, whereas religion touts itself as an unassailable and revealed truth. While there may have been some moments when a religion or religiously-inspired thinker have hit upon something that chimes with modern rationalism, this in itself proves nothing. Mayans: good at maths, but what about human sacrifice?
Schrei admits in his own article that more is required than divinely inspired assertions: in the case of Abhinavagupta he says modern physicists have 'confirmed' portions of Abhinavagupta's view of how the universe works. This rather gives away the fact that Schrei himself obviously believes that religious assertion are simply not enough, and that science and reason, based on doubt and questioning is the ultimate sanction.
"Most atheists I’ve encountered, Hitchens included, have an extremely limited concept of what God might even be, as they exist in reaction specifically to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god as revealed by through current religious power structures."
When you're an atheist you don't believe in a god so it makes it pointless to think of random circumstances in which there is some magical creature that does or did sh|t. I wouldn't say that atheists think they have science on their side. But we do ask the same question. Where's the evidence?
The dissonance between many religious beliefs and rationality has direct political and socioeconomic implications . The increasing prevalence of a profoundly uneducated people threatens the to stall the economic engine of a modern society. Moreover organized fanatacism flourishes in that kind ignorance, and that is a more visible threat to everyone.
so my question to the atheist is -- can you sit comfortably in the idea that people who believe in god are just as smart as you are? and my advice to atheist would be to question the dogma, not the fundamental faith.
I think there is good reason to question this cause and effect relationship. There IS a correlation, but it is a symptom far more than it is a cause. There certainly does seem to be an epidemic of willful ignorance, a general dumbing down that distorts the common understanding of science, religion, philosophy, politics, critical thought, culture . . . and, well, just about everything that is not a televised competition of some sort.
I think the problem is far more deeply rooted in the fact that we value money more than time, knowledge, wisdom, compassion, or any of our ideals. The fact that every necessity is someone's paycheck, and most common folk have little or no choice but to spend most of their time working their asses off to have enough money to pay for their continued existence. And the fact that the economy is now the only environment we seem to actually respect.
There are far too many people who have no time, resources or cultural encouragement to dig any deeper or question anything they believe they "know." Entry-level knowledge (whether it's in the realm of science, religion, philosophy, politics, critical thought, culture, etc.) is free, and relatively easy. At this level, many have yet to transcend the beliefs they've brought with them. To insist that all one knows is all that can be known is a mistake, regardless of who does it.
Also, it has nothing to do with the question.
I'm glad to hear it.
"Also, it has nothing to do with the question."
Really? What is the question?
True. If this is your proof, however, then you have to consider the same argument for sacred texts recording and documenting the existence of spiritual or religious information.
My argument is simply that there are those who do not know the experience. And no amount of proof is equal to the experience.
What is known about our ancestry, and that of every other living thing, is that there was one entity that was revered (honored profoundly and respectfully) - to do otherwise meant extinction. We call it (her) nature, and I have written several books extolling her virtues.
It is our outrageous arrogance and ignorance that presumes we are somehow special in the grander scheme of things. I believe nature has a very different view of our place among living things, and it is certainly not at the top.
The beauty of revering nature is that she provides the same guidance to all living things, and we don't need self-appointed paid intermediaries. We do not have to suspend reality or have an unrealistic belief system. We just have to look out the window at the plants, animals, and soil, and there she is in all her beauty.
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com