Feisty entry into contentious field of atheist manifestos

[struggle4progress]

4. The God Argument: the Case Against Religion and For Humanism by AC Grayling – review

As a militant atheist, the philosopher AC Grayling has much in common with the literal fundamentalists he derides
Jonathan Rée
The Guardian, Thursday 7 March 2013 05.00 EST

... Grayling is happy to rush in where Russell feared to tread, and if you want to learn how to be a good humanist, then The God Argument might be the place to start. Humanism turns out to be "beautiful and life-enhancing", and as easy as pie. "It requires only clear eyes, reason, and kindness," according to Grayling. If you think that moral choices should be grounded in "the responsible use of reason" and "human experience in the real world" then you are already a humanist, though you may not know it. As a humanist you will like "human rights", and dislike "war, injustice, and poverty", but you will allow everyone to choose their own "values and goals" just as you have chosen your own. Best of all, as a humanist you will be frightfully jolly about sex: you will consider it a "deeply valuable thing", provided, of course, that it is practised in a fair-minded, hygienic and respectful manner ...

A believer might like to point out that science, too, can be traced back to the Dark Ages, and that contemporary physicists might be pretty embarrassed by the outmoded opinions of revered patriarchs such as Newton or Maxwell. But Grayling will press on with his interrogation. You surely do not believe that fairies paint the flowers while you are asleep, he says: why then imagine that you can catch a glimpse of divinity in the beauties of nature? If you are prepared to accept the existence of God without conclusive evidence, why not stand up for "green cheese beneath the surface of the moon" as well? Will you deny that you have sought guidance from religious sources – that you have in effect committed moral plagiarism by taking "a one-size-fits-all model" from the religious supermarket and passing it off as your own work? If this is not what your religion means, Grayling submits, then it has no meaning at all.

Militant atheism makes the strangest bedfellows. Grayling sees himself as a champion of the Enlightenment, but in the old battle over the interpretation of religious texts he is on the side of conservative literalist fundamentalists rather than progressive critical liberals. He believes that the scriptures must be taken at their word, rather than being allowed to flourish as many-layered parables, teeming with quarrels, follies, jokes, reversals and paradoxes. Resistance is, of course, futile. If you suggest that his vaunted "clarifications" annihilate the poetry of religious experience or the nuance of theological reflection, he will mark you down for obstructive irrationalism. He is, after all, a professional philosopher, and his training tells him that what cannot be translated into plain words is nothing but sophistry and illusion.

The distinction between believers and unbelievers may be far less important than Grayling and the New Atheists like to think. At any rate it cuts right across the rather interesting difference between the grim absolutists, such as Grayling and the religious fundamentalists, who think that knowledge must involve perfect communion with literal truth, and the sceptical ironists – both believers and unbelievers – who observe with a shrug that we are all liable to get things wrong, and the human intellect has a lot to be modest about. We live our lives in the midst of ambiguities we will never resolve ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/07/god-argument-humanism-grayling-review