Angry Atheists and Anti-Theists

[vulcanlogician]

To me, this is one of the differences between regular old atheists and so-called New Atheists.

Sam Harris is a problem as well, concerning "new atheists." Not that I think Harris is some kind of dumbass or anything. But he writes "pop philosophy." (Bleh...) Pop philosophy is nothing new. Plato and Socrates named it "sophistry" back in the day. And it's simply no good... except, perhaps, to reach a broad audience. As a basic rule of thumb everybody thinks that they can do philosophy expertly. Dawkins is no exception.

There is only a small class of people who think they are incapable of doing philosophy all that well. Thus they proceed very carefully when they try. There is a name for these people: philosophers. These are the only guys who could ever suck at philosophy; everyone else is great at it.

***

As far as Aquinas... I gave him a shot. I really did. I always give theistic philosophers more leeway when weighing the merits of their ideas, especially concerning proofs of God. Aquinas nor Anselm ever budged me. As far as theistic philosophers, John Hick and William James are probably the best I've encountered. Compared to them, Aquinas and Anselm seem pretty agenda-driven. IMO, the only time you are going to get worthwhile theistic philosophy is in a backdrop where people take atheism/skepticism seriously.

If you think St. Thomas has a good argument, I'd be willing to look it over, but he always struck me as someone whose proofs work only if one begins with the assumption that God exists. In that way, I found much of his thinking to be circular.

I know you appreciate him, Belequa, because he kept intellectualism alive in an age when the candle of wisdom the ancients lit for us was nearly extinguished. Some may credit the Catholic Church for doing something similar. But there are two sides to this. The Church more so "horded and monopolized" knowledge than kept it alive. After all, they arguably could have done more to share their knowledge with everyone else. Add to that their periodic opposition to intellectuals like Spinoza or (perhaps) Galileo, and the Church's contribution to the intellectual health of Europe becomes quite a murky issue.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hicks was more of a theist who was a philosopher than a theistic philosopher, wasn't he?  I don't think that anyone with concrete god beliefs, who isn't willing to describe those beliefs as mythical..will find anything comforting there.

[LadyForCamus]

To me, this is one of the differences between regular old atheists and so-called New Atheists.

Sam Harris is a problem as well, concerning "new atheists." Not that I think Harris is some kind of dumbass or anything. But he writes "pop philosophy." (Bleh...) Pop philosophy is nothing new. Plato and Socrates named it "sophistry" back in the day. And it's simply no good... except, perhaps, to reach a broad audience. As a basic rule of thumb everybody thinks that they can do philosophy expertly. Dawkins is no exception.

There is only a small class of people who think they are incapable of doing philosophy all that well. Thus they proceed very carefully when they try. There is a name for these people: philosophers. These are the only guys who could ever suck at philosophy; everyone else is great at it.

***

As far as Aquinas... I gave him a shot. I really did. I always give theistic philosophers more leeway when weighing the merits of their ideas, especially concerning proofs of God. Aquinas nor Anselm ever budged me. As far as theistic philosophers, John Hick and William James are probably the best I've encountered. Compared to them, Aquinas and Anselm seem pretty agenda-driven. IMO, the only time you are going to get worthwhile theistic philosophy is in a backdrop where people take atheism/skepticism seriously.

If you think St. Thomas has a good argument, I'd be willing to look it over, but he always struck me as someone whose proofs work only if one begins with the assumption that God exists. In that way, I found much of his thinking to be circular.

I know you appreciate him, Belequa, because he kept intellectualism alive in an age when the candle of wisdom the ancients lit for us was nearly extinguished. Some may credit the Catholic Church for doing something similar. But there are two sides to this. The Church more so "horded and monopolized" knowledge than kept it alive. After all, they arguably could have done more to share their knowledge with everyone else. Add to that their periodic opposition to intellectuals like Spinoza or (perhaps) Galileo, and the Church's contribution to the intellectual health of Europe becomes quite a murky issue.

What does it take to do philosophy “right”?  Or be good at it?  Why is Sam Harris not good at philosophy? I’m not trying to be a smart ass here; I’m genuinely want to know what skill sets and training are required to be good at doing philosophy, and what exactly is bad philosophy?

[Belacqua]

There is only a small class of people who think they are incapable of doing philosophy all that well. Thus they proceed very carefully when they try. There is a name for these people: philosophers. These are the only guys who could ever suck at philosophy; everyone else is great at it.

I like this a lot! 

It seems so easy, as long as we don't really know what we're doing.....

I know you appreciate him, Belequa, because he kept intellectualism alive in an age when the candle of wisdom the ancients lit for us was nearly extinguished. 

Aquinas was a great philosopher by any measure. He did important work in just about every field of philosophy, from aesthetics to epistemology to ethics. Some of this is long out-moded, of course, but a lot is still fascinating to work on. If people knew it better and engaged with it fairly, they would see that. 

Somehow it's got to the point where most people today who say "Aquinas' philosophy" are talking only about the Five Ways. As if that was the only thing he ever wrote. Plus it is very rare to see a non-straw-man version of the Five Ways discussed outside of the most obscure specialist literature. They are treated as a number of things which Thomas never ever intended them to be. It's kind of like the famous "angels dancing on the head of a pin" example. That problem was never used in theological debate, and was made up much later simply to ridicule people for saying something they never said. (Thomas does discuss the difference between extension and location, and gives angels as an example, in order to differentiate these important categories.) 

We also have to be careful about the common view of intellectual history, in which the wonderful rational Greeks and Romans were held underwater and drowned by the evil Christians, who were defeated in their turn after a thousand years of Dark Ages by super-hero Francis Bacon and the Enlightenment Avengers. Or something like that. Scholarship on the so-called Dark Ages, and how much intellectual activity there was, and how much of it was opposed by officialdom, shows that the popular view is about as accurate as George Washington chopping down the cherry tree.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

Sam Harris is a problem as well, concerning "new atheists." Not that I think Harris is some kind of dumbass or anything. But he writes "pop philosophy." (Bleh...) Pop philosophy is nothing new. Plato and Socrates named it "sophistry" back in the day. And it's simply no good... except, perhaps, to reach a broad audience. As a basic rule of thumb everybody thinks that they can do philosophy expertly. Dawkins is no exception.

There is only a small class of people who think they are incapable of doing philosophy all that well. Thus they proceed very carefully when they try. There is a name for these people: philosophers. These are the only guys who could ever suck at philosophy; everyone else is great at it.

***

As far as Aquinas... I gave him a shot. I really did. I always give theistic philosophers more leeway when weighing the merits of their ideas, especially concerning proofs of God. Aquinas nor Anselm ever budged me. As far as theistic philosophers, John Hick and William James are probably the best I've encountered. Compared to them, Aquinas and Anselm seem pretty agenda-driven. IMO, the only time you are going to get worthwhile theistic philosophy is in a backdrop where people take atheism/skepticism seriously.

If you think St. Thomas has a good argument, I'd be willing to look it over, but he always struck me as someone whose proofs work only if one begins with the assumption that God exists. In that way, I found much of his thinking to be circular.

I know you appreciate him, Belequa, because he kept intellectualism alive in an age when the candle of wisdom the ancients lit for us was nearly extinguished. Some may credit the Catholic Church for doing something similar. But there are two sides to this. The Church more so "horded and monopolized" knowledge than kept it alive. After all, they arguably could have done more to share their knowledge with everyone else. Add to that their periodic opposition to intellectuals like Spinoza or (perhaps) Galileo, and the Church's contribution to the intellectual health of Europe becomes quite a murky issue.

What does it take to do philosophy “right”?  Or be good at it?  Why is Sam Harris not good at philosophy? I’m not trying to be a smart ass here; I’m genuinely want to know what skill sets and training are required to be good at doing philosophy, and what exactly is bad philosophy?

There's only one thing required for "philosophy" because it is only one thing.  The love of wisdom.  You can make a million mistakes trying to figure something out, but a lot of it is about the journey.  Gaining knowledge and learning how it applies to you and the world around you.

[Belacqua]

What does it take to do philosophy “right”?  Or be good at it?  Why is Sam Harris not good at philosophy? I’m not trying to be a smart ass here; I’m genuinely want to know what skill sets and training are required to be good at doing philosophy, and what exactly is bad philosophy?

Important questions! 

I've never thought to lay out the qualities before...

Surely, open-mindedness. A willingness to engage with the real arguments of others, and not mis-state those arguments to make it easy to attack them. Willingness to self-criticize. Willingness to see one's own axioms so as not to beg questions.  

Bad philosophy I guess does the opposite of those things. What makes me gripe are the people who think they are making knock-down arguments who in fact don't know that their objections were dealt with long ago. I guess that means that doing good philosophy requires reading lots and lots of philosophy. And if you want to publish, getting smart people to edit you. 

I can't specifically talk about Harris, because I don't know his writing well enough.

[The Grand Nudger]

Vulcan hit it pretty well, Harris does pop philosophy.  It's not actually bad - he just has a tendency to state the conclusion of some academic viewpoint rather than lay out what wouldn't keep the average reader interested for more than a page or so.  

Though he might wanna go and take another look at the sophists.  They were professional teachers.  Plato was a cranky ass old man, lol. I think we all know better than to blindly trust in one partisans hit piece on an entire discipline, by now.

[LadyForCamus]

Too drunk. Will revisit tomorrow. 😭❤️

[vulcanlogician]

Hicks was more of a theist who was a philosopher than a theistic philosopher, wasn't he?  I don't think that anyone with concrete god beliefs, who isn't willing to describe those beliefs as mythical..will find anything comforting there.

Very true. Hick is about as far from fundamentalism as you can get and still be a theist. He doesn't literally believe in the resurrection of Christ... but then again... to him, the myth-value of the resurrection story is real: spiritually real.  

He's also argued that theistic belief is rational by taking a real world skeptics angle on the whole thing. He argues that mystical experiences are just as "real" as sensory experiences when you really get down to the brass tax. In this way, a connection to God via mystical experience might be considered a "real" experience of God. Keep in mind, this is not a proof of God's existence. Hick is merely arguing that (in this way) theistic belief can have a rational basis. So (while his god beliefs are not "concrete") he nonetheless does have god beliefs.

***

Traditional theists will certainly find this guy dissatisfying. I like his theory that reincarnation is real, but you still only live one life (doh!). You are "reincarnated" through what you create and pass on during your one single personal manifestation as a living being:

[Gwaithmir]

The worst example I can think of off hand is in Dawkins' book, where he thinks he has rebutted Thomas Aquinas. This is in a book put out by a [formerly] reputable publisher, but apparently nobody bothered to check whether his argument was embarrassingly bad or not. I mean -- he lives in Oxford, which is probably the town with the most English-speaking people in the world who understand Thomas Aquinas. Yet he didn't walk across the street to ask someone who knows better than he does. He just assumes that because the argument is Christian, it must be stupid. (Even my own editor, in a much less high-priced publishing company, called me out when I used a pre-Cantor definition of infinity. Yet nobody did such a favor for Dawkins.) 

Can you be more specific? Exactly what did Dawkins have to say that you disagree with? How did he fail to rebut Thomas Aquinas?