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The New Atheism: What’s a Liberal, Spiritual Jew To Do?
The Polymath
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Other articles by Jay Michaelson
More in Arts & CultureFor the past four years, Jay Michaelson has offered Forward readers a panoply of diverse contributions — news pieces about “emerging Jewish spiritualities” and reviews of works from Franz Rosenzweig to “Meshugga Beach Party”; essays on paganism and sensuality, politics and homosexuality; expositions on Hanukkah, Purim and several Torah parshiot, and several pointed (and sometimes controversial) commentaries on the Jewish world today. The range reflects the writer: Jay is a law professor at Boston University, a doctoral candidate in Kabbalah at Hebrew University, the founder of the intellectual Jewish journal Zeek, the director of a national GLBT organization called Nehirim and the author of this year’s “God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice” (Jewish Lights) and “Another Word for Sky: Poems” (Lethe Press), as well as prize-winning fiction and nonfiction that made him a recent finalist for the Koret Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award.
Indeed, the staff here likes to joke that Jay has a different “bio” each time he writes for us, so we thought it was time to create a column that draws on Jay’s diverse interests and capabilities. “The Polymath” is the result. A polymath is someone who has multiple fields of interest and expertise, and we think Jay certainly qualifies. Integrating culture and religion, sense and soul, the critical and the curious, the new column aims for a truly postmodern perspective: one that is neither a part of a continuous tradition nor wholly apart from it, and one that includes both theory and practice, breadth of perspective and depth of seriousness. In the age of the iPod, when all of us build our playlists from different styles and genres, is there any alternative?
It’s hard to be a liberal religious Jew these days. Some of us first felt this way back in September 2001, when we felt forced to make statements like, “Al Qaeda is not really Islam” or, “Religion still is good for humankind — just not that kind of religion.” Others started getting uncomfortable when the “clash of civilizations” entered the political mainstream, trying, with difficulty, to chart a “third way” between the religious right’s war of Christianity against Islam and the secular left’s struggle of secularism against religion, fundamentalism and intolerance — all three of which seemed to be synonyms for one another.
But now, with the rise of the “new atheism,” given voice by such writers as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and, most recently, Christopher Hitchens, the battle lines have grown even starker. These days, religion — all of it, not just the bomb-wearing, stone-throwing kind — has been blamed for everything from war to ignorance, racism and sexism, even just plain stupidity. Oy.
Dawkins and Hitchens, because their critiques are broader, are, in a way, easier to counter. Of course, not all religious people are deluded literalists who think that every word of the Bible/New Testament/Quran dropped from an anthropomorphic deity in pearly-gated heaven. But Harris, aware of the distinctions between fundamentalists and “moderates,” insists that we religious moderates are perhaps the worst of all, since we legitimize the fundamentalists, and ought to know better. His points are often well taken.
Unfortunately, the Jewish community’s religious writers have often replied with little subtlety and much defensiveness. Dennis Prager, for example, debating Harris in the online journal Jewcy.com, trotted out the old medieval proofs for the existence of God and then argued essentially that if so many people believe something, it simply has to be true. (Surely, by that reasoning, Christianity is right and Judaism is wrong, but I digress.) David Klinghoffer, in these pages, argued for ahistorical fideism: Forget the hard textual evidence about the authorship of the Bible and the Zohar, he said, we’ve got to stand up for what we believe — as though religion would become “indefensible” (his word) if the Orthodox claims of authorship ever turned out to be false.
But these are just the kinds of flimsy arguments that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens love to hear: faith, surrounded by fallacy. They validate the atheists’ claims that religion is for the soft-minded and thick-skulled. It’s either something you believe or something you don’t, and once you take away the preposterous truth-claims at its foundation (for example, the world is 6,000 years old, or that a self-contradictory text was authored by an omniscient deity), the edifice of religion crumbles.
These are also poor allies for real religious moderates — by which I mean the sort of people who don’t believe the fundamentalist myth but do cherish the power of myth; who keep the mitzvot as spiritual practices, not as commandments from a rewarding-and-punishing God; who have a notion of the Divine in their lives, but not necessarily the traditional image of judgmental Yahweh ready to strike down sinners. Where is a Jewish moderate to turn in a polarized world where our allies are so disagreeable and our adversaries speak the words we ourselves long to hear?
Let’s admit it: There’s an attractive ebullience in the new atheism. Hitchens, as always, is an acerbic wit, while Harris’s book has the feel of finally “telling it like it is.” And the movement is spreading. I was recently forwarded a press release about “The Blasphemy Challenge” (www.blasphemychallenge.com), which encourages participants to blaspheme the Holy Spirit — the only unforgivable sin, according to some Christian doctrine — and upload their blasphemy video to YouTube. Not surprisingly, a large number of the participants are teenagers, and, at least for this religious liberal, the clips are great fun to watch. What you see is courage, freethinking, chutzpah: These are kids daring to take a stand. As a rebellious, God-wrestling Jew myself, I find it a lot more religiously inspiring than nice boys and girls standing in line to sing hymns.
At the same time, there are a number of blind spots and gaps in the atheists’ arguments as applied to religious moderates.
To begin with, all the leading atheist tracts assume that religion is, first and foremost, a matter of belief. Religion is bad science, basically, which insists that untenable propositions be taken on faith — especially since they can’t be proved, and can often be disproved relatively easily. This may be the religion of most Christians and some Jews, but most of Judaism is, in the familiar formulation, more about deed than creed — more what you do than what you believe. Keep the Sabbath, act justly, pray, obey the dietary laws? You’ve got most of Jewish law covered right there, regardless of what you believe about God and history. Now, of course, it makes sense that neo-atheism targets Christianity and Islam rather than Judaism, since the former are more populous and more important. But a lot of what their leading advocates say has nothing to do with me, or my less “moderate” co-religionists.
Second, and relatedly, the religion conjured by the atheists is altogether too rational. It’s as if people woke up in the morning and selected a belief system as they would a box of cereal off the shelf. For most spiritual liberals, however, religion is what gets you in your guts: It’s the primal archetypes that speak to the heart, the embodied rituals, the symbols pregnant with thousands of years of history. Harris wants us all to meditate and become Buddhists (the last chapter of “The End of Faith” is a straight dharma talk, like those I’ve heard on many a Buddhist retreat), but this prescription ignores the role that myth plays in individual and communal life. As a Buddhist practitioner myself, I do think that the world would be better off if more people would meditate. But most people don’t have the time, aptitude or enthusiasm for such pursuits. They need a system that provides meaning, community, ethics and story; they thirst for symbol and myth. Religion, not meditation, does that — including in the Buddhist world, which, as Harris fails to mention, is just as full of ritual, deities, dogma and myth as the Jewish and Christian ones.
Finally, there is the element of community. Yes, as Hitchens relentlessly points out, most people’s images of God are primitive. But this is the genius, not the failure, of religion. As Maimonides wrote more than 800 years ago, religion works because it speaks on multiple levels. Philosophers can find their truth in biblical text (albeit with some linguistic stretching), and people too busy feeding their families to study philosophy can find ethical guidance and communal myth. Of course, there is always the danger in such a system that some less-philosophical types will over-literalize and fetishize their religious beliefs. In the mystical metaphor, they mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. But the alternative is a medieval world in which one must be a theologian in order to be religious.
None of this is to deny the trenchancy of many atheist arguments. Certain beliefs are indeed risible. Jews, like just about every other religious group, have long believed that our tribe is better than others, a notion that once ensured our survival but has long outlived its usefulness. Primitive ideas about God — again, that He likes us more than other people, or that He is a He — should evolve, just as our primitive ideas about cosmology, disease and technology have evolved. And we should never confuse religion (why the world is, and what we should do) with science (how the world is, and what we can do). Neither does a good job of impersonating the other.
Harris is also right that we moderates are kidding ourselves if we think we’re not complicit in the far right’s “distortions” of our religious and spiritual ideas. Those of us who style ourselves religious moderates must take responsibility for acts of intolerance and violence committed in our religion’s name — which, to be fair, Jews of all political stripes almost always condemn, even as we argue over the details.
In short, the new atheism is an important, useful auditing of our religious ideas. We should read its arguments and, rather than defensively parry them, consider them with a critical mind. And where appropriate, we should check our religious zealotries with careful reflection, ethical consideration and, yes, quiet meditation before they lead to dangerous consequences.
Personally, I haven’t taken the Blasphemy Challenge. Not only because it’s meaningless to me (denying the Holy Spirit being someone else’s blasphemy, not mine) but because I prefer to address the world as You rather than It. I love my relationship with God, even though I have no idea what that word means. That said, I share with the neo-atheists a serious doubt not only of my religion’s dogmas but even of my own religious sentiments and mystical experiences, which I have had thanks to serious spiritual practice. At the end of the day, whatever God is, It must be closely related to truth, and so certainty is the enemy of true religion, not its support.
But I find, when my mind is quiet enough to let the rest of me be truthful with itself, that the movements and notes of religion cause me to be more loving, more compassionate and more insistent upon justice. I don’t believe the nonsense that our religion often spreads about God, Torah and Israel. But I’ve found that there is something deeper than belief.
Comments
D. Midbar is a post-death-of-God theologian who suggests a new paradigm for preserving spirituality in the context of atheist, scientific and rational thought: http://www.atheistprayer.blogspot.com
"I prefer to address the world as You rather than It. I love my relationship with God, even though I have no idea what that word means."
???????????????
No, wait, let me try reading that again...
?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
One gets the impression that most religious people simply don't pay any heed to atheists and it's to Jay Michaelson's credit that he does. However, the position he stakes out is untenable. How can one 'love' one's relationship to God and yet insist that one has 'no idea what that means'?
It's so untenable, I suspect he's just being coy. It gives an indulgent wink to the faithful, while admitting nothing to the rationalists.
"I prefer to address the world as You rather than It. I love my relationship with God, even though I have no idea what that word means."
I had to come back and read that again. It still hurts my head.
Presumably, for your beliefs about things you think are real, you DO have an idea what words mean. So if you don't think there is a "Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe," just admit you're an atheist and move on.
"I prefer to address the world as You rather than It. I love my relationship with God, even though I have no idea what that word means."
I think these statement refers to Michaelson's view of the world as made up of personal relationships between human beings, interactive personal experiences of human others -- rather than as an impersonal thing.
Stating he doesn't know what the word (God) means -- is obviously a touch of humility, acknowledging his and every man's limitation in comprehending God's fullness.
'What's a Liberal, spiritual Jew to do'? Find a phone booth (there aren't very many of them left) and join the rest of the liberal, spiritual Jews.
In the meantime the non-Liberal spiritual Jews will be making enoough babies to outnumber you countless times over.
1. You are correct:Judaism is concerned more with deed than creed. The question is what motivates the deed? Do I keep the sabbath because 'it makes good sense' or 'in my heart I know it's right'? If the explanation of a 'higher authority' is absent from the equation that explains my actions than I may be a humanist or atheist or some other 'ist', but who needs God?
A real Buddhist would understand the world as ME rather than You!
In response to previous comments & random thoughts on this artice:
Jay’s approach engages and is committed to the western-rationalist principle that we cannot assert and ‘believe’ [read: declare true] any proposition if it goes contrary to empirical evidence or sound reason.
Based on this, Jay steers clear of religious dogma, though the questions of knowledge and wisdom do not end here for him. Underlying this article and Jay’s thinking in general is a fundamental epistemological claim, that rationalism is not the only means for arriving at knowledge. Rationalism has authority over knowledge / statements that reside in its domain: specific analytical claims about the world [“This specific kind of deity exists, and He/She/It/They is/are like x”; “This text was written by the instruction of an omniscient deity at a specific point in history”, etc.], but not over the more general and vague notions of truth/knowledge that are inherently arational [in general, statements that pertain to moral-spiritual thinking and existentialism]. Referring back to the opening sentence of this paragraph, this approach is also committed to the idea that there are certain kinds of statements and thoughts that are, by their nature, outside the realm of rational thinking -- they are not subject to empirical evidence or the dictates of sound reasoning. This is not because they go against empirical evidence, or because they are unsound – but rather because they are constructed of a different language of meaning.
As such, Jay’s rationalism demands that he not violate rationalism by being irrational. But what Jay holds to be “deeper than belief”, his ‘spiritual intuition’, if you will, simultaneously demands that he not limit the scope of his mind and world exclusively to the rational – there’s other stuff out there. That is to say, if we are to consider ourselves modern, we cannot go against rationalism, but this is not synonymous to saying that everything needs to be rational.
Epistemological humility plays into his expression of this artional side of things by making sure not to cross the line by using spiritual intutition to declare rational statements, i.e. he won’t make claims about God or about Torah based on his spiritual intuitition/sense - because he realizes that that specific historical facts cannot be arrived at through these senses, however legitimate and real they are in their own right.
An essential part of this is a basic shift from viewing Judaism/religion as a set of beliefs (rational system) to a more amorphous and arational notion of Judaism/religion as culture (including myth, narrative, value, purpose, aspirations, etc).
I like it. And I think it's more or less coherent, though it does require some tighter definitions and clarity at points.
I don't see anything "new" about the so-called new atheism. It seems to me no more than a rehash of scientistic delusions from the mid-19th century, such as positivism. It refuses to account for the unprecedented levels of murder and mayhem perpetrated in the last century by the practical inheritors of this "enlightenment", such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, or those who reverted to Nordic polytheistic paganism. Most of the nations and their leaders who defied and conquered the mass-murdering political utopians were Christians. Tradition conquered innovation.
Harris and Hitchens are mere publicists of infidelity, whose gibes add little to the stuff the likes of Ingersoll were churning out a hundred years ago. There will always be a market for such "daring" pabulum among adolescents and arrested adolescents, mainly embittered males with a smattering of academic education who can't get a date (the predominant social group attracted to atheism).
Neither do I see anything wrong in assuming from the near-universality of religious belief and practice that it is probably true. Dawkins is, or was before he took to professional blasphemy, a zoologist. He ought to be more impressed by this part of the genome of homo sapiens sapiens. He ought also to be more informed about politics and history: the ignorance of it betrayed by his tracts is appalling, and not just ignorance of the faiths he disparages. He ought to be asking himself, as an evolution-worshipper, why religiosity is apparently hardwired, and why atheism has gained so little traction since it became articulable in polite society around 150 years ago.
Why has the percentage of the world's population adhering to the major religions been static since c. 1900? Why is official atheism crumbling in China, as it has done in the former USSR? Why has America, on so many counts the most "modern" nation, remained so resolutely Christian, and with the most fundamentalist varieties flourishing most strongly? Why would a modernising country such as South Korea become simultaneously Christianised? Why is Islam, the harshest and most literalist of major faiths, on the rise?
It may be that a creed as empty as liberal Judaism feels cowed by the pinpricks of these entertainers. The rest of us are not worried. We observe that the great theme of the 20th century was the defeat of the murderous heresies of the science-worshippers and "rational" planners of paradises on earth. A new age of faith has opened.
Zionism without God (Supernatural) makes sense to me. Relying on the supewrnatural just interferes with scientific thought. I often wonder how any mathematician can believe in the supernatural.
>Underlying this article and Jay’s thinking in general is a fundamental epistemological claim, that rationalism is not the only means for arriving at knowledge.
my problem with the article is that he seems to identify exactly the interesting question -- it his "spiritual" practice at odds with the rational or not? if his spiritual practice is really concerned with the resonance of myth, the ritualized experience of community and personal reflection, these practices, while subjective and non-rational, do not necessarily pre-suppose a supernatural world or other phenonmena unsupported by empirical evidence and sound reason.
unfortunately for the reader, his "epistemological humility" kicks in (or conversely, his bravado takes a powder) just at the point where one is most acutely curious to know what it is he really thinks.
Michaelson has let us know that he doesn't believe in an anthropomorphic god, nor in a literal interpretation of scripture. He separates himself from those who have a "primitive" notion of God. But what *is* his God, in rational terms? or, heck, in any kind of terms? if his god is not antropomorphic, how is it that he has a 'relationship' with it and wants to address it as 'you'? Does that mean that God is anthropomorphic, but acknowledged to be a myth, a communally shared habit of mind, an ideal? Does it mean he knows rationally that his God doesn't exist, but he procedes non-rationally as if he did? Or that God is indeed an incorporial, magical entity?
Not a clue?
One can conjecture, but it would have been more telling to hear how Michaelson actually thinks.
One finds that he has stopped short of telling us what he thinks, presumably not for lack of thoughts on the subjects or words to express them.
For all you quasi BUJU'S out there. Aren't you suppose to live life with a certain amount of uncertainty? How can anybody have had any type of spiritual moments and be able to precisely label it? That is the real beauty of any type of spiritual experience. As far as the You-It, was he not making an allusion to Buber? What I read is a humble man trying his best to make sense out of the world and feed a hunger that he and probably most of you have. That is except the ones who have their PHD'S in chutzpah.
What I understand Jay Michaelson to be arguing is that people need God, not necessarily that there is a God. I believe that religion fills a void in our ability to understand the complexity of the universe. Concepts too difficult to understand such as what happens to the soul when you die, open the door to belief in some other post death existence that only religion can answer as the alternative is incomprehensible. The other need we have for God is to provide societal order associated with the fear that in a godless society morals would evaporate and lawlessness take over. It is this latter need that addresses a fundamental human preoccupation with lack of faith in ourselves and a willingness to place that trust in anything of a higher nature (in some cases the belief in alien contact provides an alternative or augmentation to religion). Just like watching a magician at work, where there is no simple answer to explain what we see, our minds must fill that void and religion is our answer to the magic of life.
Is it possible that God is a biblical metaphor for our conscience, (what Freud called the id) does not almost every Torah character "argue" with God that he is inhumane - and win the argument (naturally, humans are and god is not). Is not the sacrifice of Isaac an allegory for a father who twices prostitutes his wife to protect himself, and then (tongue in cheek implausible) has a son when his wife is beyond child bearing (to separate the incidents) and then worries will they laugh at him, (the son is called he who laughs!, I bet a good minority of fathers throughtout history have these doubts - if they are the true father, harbour thoughts of death and come to love their children)). Is not the God concept a useful scientific hypothesis past its sell by date and does not Moses give a clue when he claims he will be the last to whom God speaks directly (everyone else will only "experience" - neat we only have his word for this, maybe he knew what we struggle to accept?), is the cosmopolitan non-interventionist God of Isaiah, an obvious development towards God being entirely in our heads, from the local petulant bully boy of the God of Abraham. Have we let down humankind, (light unto the nations?) by ceasing this halacha (moving forwards), beacuse the Rabbinate lose control (and income!) if we each have god in our heads? Some thoughts from a Glatt Secular Jew.
In response to David L Nilsson +:
1. “I don't see anything "new" about the so-called new atheism”
“New”, when referring to cultural trends and phenomenon, need not refer to anything related to content per se. Often, the only “new” aspect is the context from which the trend / phenomenon springs forth. In our present situation, what is at least new in the contextual sense is the meeting of two points, among others: (1) a very vocal and explicitly violent religion of Islam (or ‘form of Islam’, if you prefer), and (2) the ability of individuals or small groups to wreak widespread terror more easily than ever before.
2. “It refuses to account for the unprecedented levels of murder and mayhem perpetrated in the last century by the practical inheritors of this "enlightenment", such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot…”
One major point, trumped by Harris more than the other contemporary writers under discussion, is that the crux of the issue is one of dogmatic approaches vs. non-dogmatic approaches, not enlightemnet vs. religion. This is an important reformulation, one which can respond to Nilsson’s aforementioned challenge.
Furthermore, the need “to account” for Mao, Stalin, or any other evil-doer is only the responsibility of those who use utilitarian arguments against religious belief. These New Atheists make both analytic-truth arguments and utilitarian ones, and it seems to me that the truth-factor is of primary importance to all of them. Beyond that, we should try to be clear about the challenges Mao/Stalin/Pol Pot pose – one can very well maintain that religious belief is absolute fiction but still, in the end, good for the overall interests of humanity.
3. “Neither do I see anything wrong in assuming from the near-universality of religious belief and practice that it is probably true.”
I don’t find this argument convincing in the least bit. This point, as well as Mr. Nilsson’s rather drawn-out point about the near-hardwired nature of religious belief in humanity – points which Hitchens and Harris readily concede – seem to prove absolutely nothing. Humans are hardwired to think lots of things that don’t necessarily attest to their truth. It makes perfect sense to me that we all want a story (true or not) to account for our beginnings, cultural values, and overall sense of identity. This is not confusing or mysterious in the slightest.
In the end, Nilsson’s comments sloppily confuse utility with truth, and he criticizes liberal Judaism for what he sees as an ‘empty creed’ only because he isn’t really willing to engage the substance of his opposition. These evasive moves, his general dismissive posture to the substantive claims of the (New) Atheists, and his unrelenting ad hominem tone – these are all representative of the standard traditional defensive attitude towards modern skepticism.
And for those of us who feel discontent with the Old Guard of religious apologetics, there are either of two options: (1) throw the whole God-thing in the trash bin together with everything else that is unverifiable, or (2) struggle to find a resolution in some way.
Interestingly, Hitchen’s would seem to agree with Nilsson that the only religion worthy of defending is one that retains all its primitiveness. Anything but the whole package is, to these minds, “empty” and not worthy of defense.
Contrary to these all-or-nothing approaches, Jay Michaelson and others choose the latter approach, one of near-constant doubt, perpetual updating and reflection, and struggle. If Jay can have his story-of-origins and narrative-of-identity, it’ll be as “myth”, not as “history”. Also significant is the availability of focusing on ‘deed’ over ‘creed’, leaving a potentially ‘empty creed’ as less problematic, an option that seems to me more available to Jews than Christians.
Walk down this road, however, and both sides of the issue might charge accusations that you’re trying to straddle the fence, that you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too – and, to be quite frank, you might be. But if you’re in this latter group, you won’t mind being in Elijah’s opposition – remember, you’re decidedly liberal, and your disdain for religious intolerance might persuade you to befriend the worshippers of Ba’al instead of invoking God’s name to slaughter them. And somehow, that feels ok to me.
Michaelson clearly has not read The God Delusion, for Dawkins is quite explicit: he is NOT just setting up an "anthropomorphic deity in pearly-gated heaven" as a straw man (or rather, straw god), but is attacking "moderate" believers who conribute to the outrageous lie that it is a good thing to have "faith," i.e. to blindly believe in what is contrary to reason, especially in the supernatural. At the same time, he is fully supportive of spiritual people who adhere to what he calls "Einsteinian" religion, rejecting the supernatural but feeling awe for the univers as a whole and its natural laws.
If the editors allow you to continue this column despite your embarassing the Forward by writing egregious nonsense about a book you haven't read, it will be a blot on their honor as well as yours.
I think that rationalism exists in religious debates: "God" is called "yhvh" in Hebrew because it is a future form of the verb "to be", translatable like "existentiator" - and with some psychological imagination (my "person"-hood is no less mysterious or un-explainable with "my" milliards and billions of atoms that the "personhood" of this - inner - World-Existenciator.) "Inner" world-creator, since Philon in ancient Alexandria and Rabbi S.R. Hirsch in the Nineteenth century we have acceptable allegorical interpretations of the biblical "creation of the heaven and earth" (equating heaven with mind and earth with solid character for instance and water referring to emotions). In this approach the much-debated 6000 years refers to the creation of the "world of the prophet/Adam/" as it is proposed today by the online available Torah- and Rashi-expert Russell Hendel. A moderate religion-fan is not more responsible to cruel fundamentalists than a Social Democrat/Liberal is responsible for terrorist Communist Leninism. In view of these ideas it is perfectly possible to "love" the "Creator" without stepping out of rationalism - Jay's spiritual and mystical nostalgia and psychological arguments are wonderful for him, but it is possible to "use" religion with a completely rational approach (he is right: more so in Judaism /let us not forget yehoodi means "graetful", or "echoer"/)without compromise.
Donna is very puzzled. I mean, Buddhist Jews? Aren't they like female men? The author is very erudite, but my daddy once said you can't sit with one butt (he used a different word) on two chairs. Buddha is the deity of another religion. Jews are supposed to be ethical monotheists, whether we believe in a personal deity (Adonoi, Yahweh, whatever) or whether we just give respect to the tradition and mythic elements thereof.
But how can our polymath author say it's okay to be Jewish yet his solution for refuting the atheists and the right-wingers is to suggest worshipping the deity of another religion-- as a friendly Jewish feminist, I really can't buy into that, given how Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni)happened to be quite misogynistic, for all of his talk of tolerance.
I understand that the right-wing extreme zealots like Prager and their ilk make it all a test of faith-- a "real Jew" follows the Orthodox interpretation of Judaism, love President Bush, says things like "Islamofascism", etc. But for those of us who are moderates, that set of beliefs doesn't work either. I love Israel but disagree with some of its policies. I reject many of the interpretations which Orthodoxy claims are given by G-d, but I keep a kosher home and as you can see, I don't write out the Deity's name, out of respect for my ancestors. The Orthodox "answer" is just the other extreme of the Hitchens & Harris insistence that religion is the cause of everything bad in the world, and Jay is correct to point that out. But what is still missing for me in his essay is how a moderate or a liberal can love Judaism without embracing the practices and beliefs of another faith.
Being a Jew means a lot to me, and it's not about belief-- it's about mitzvah. It's about tikkun olom. It's about making the world a more ethical and human place. I think it CAN be done within the context of Judaism, and I continue to try to do my little part. I wish there were more liberal and moderate Jews speaking up on behalf of Judaism with the passion and determination that the right-wingers muster, or with the fervour of the atheist faction-- but I still feel caught between the extremes. So my options are to be Orthodox or be a Buddhist? No wonder I'm puzzled.
Oy indeed. If only the yahoos would get with the humble value-balancing religious-but-not-too-religious kosher-at-home, vegetarian-and-fish-out Bed, Bath and Beyond program, the world sure would be a better place.
The whole thing is so cutesy I could croak!
"(Surely, by that reasoning, Christianity is right and Judaism is wrong, but I digress.)"
No, you don't digress! That's not a digression! And no one really says "but I digress"!
Michaelson is a polymath, right? What have Jewish thinkers said about atheism in the past? What's the history of this argument? What are its legal implications (O law professor)? How does it relate to Kaballah? Please, if you want to listen to your quiet mind being truthful with itself, go up to Yaddo or something. Otherwise, share some learning, and write like it's not the most wonderful thing that's ever been done.
Mr. Nilsson wrote:
It refuses to account for the unprecedented levels of murder and mayhem perpetrated in the last century by the practical inheritors of this "enlightenment", such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, or those who reverted to Nordic polytheistic paganism."
That argument (that bad atheism is more dangerous than bad religion) is SO pre-September 11.
That is- the Communists' level of murder and mayhem may still be "unprecedented" today- but if Bin Laden et. al. get the kind of lethal toys they are looking for, the Islamist body count may wind up exceeding that of the Communists or Nazis.
I don't agree with you that the concept of the chosen people means taht Jews are better than eveyone else.
The problems with Harris and Hitchens, et al is they blame religion for the follies and foilbles and human beings that would exist with or without religion. or a belife in God.
Human beings have needs that are not rational and that does not always make them bad. Harris and Hitchens seem to have a very certain type of male view of the world that discredits feelings and emotions.
My religion is not based on belief. The question I ask does this practice offer me spritual sustenance. I have not converted to Christianity because I think Judaism is better or because I think that it is truer. Ultimately I have not converted because it offers me no spritual sustenance on living in this world.
I liked Jay's essay and felt he was being sincere. I think it is helpful to view his comments as an expression of Negative Capability; i.e. "...when man is capable of being in uncertainties,Mysteries,doubts,without any irritable reaching after fact & reason..."(John Keats, 1817). (I suspect Mr Keats meant women also.) Deeds can be removed from a religous framework(for those who need a rationalist approach) by any of several contemporary commentaries on virtue ethics (see Phillipa Foot for example). I am not troubled by Jay's need to embed his virtue ethics into a framework of rituals, syncretic or otherwise. Finally,the second commandment warns us(god-fearing or not)about idolatry-and this idol can be atheism or science or Darwinism or fascism. Be careful what you put on a pedestal!
I liked Jay's essay and felt he was being sincere. I think it is helpful to view his comments as an expression of Negative Capability; i.e. "...when man is capable of being in uncertainties,Mysteries,doubts,without any irritable reaching after fact & reason..."(John Keats, 1817). (I suspect Mr Keats meant women also.) Deeds can be removed from a religous framework(for those who need a rationalist approach) by any of several contemporary commentaries on virtue ethics (see Phillipa Foot for example). I am not troubled by Jay's need to embed his virtue ethics into a framework of rituals, syncretic or otherwise. Finally,the second commandment warns us(god-fearing or not)about idolatry-and this idol can be atheism or science or Darwinism or fascism. Be careful what you put on a pedestal!
Why should someone be criticised who has taken the trouble to write down something that is extremely difficult to express: the residue of childhood compulsory religious practice of any kind after a lifetime of responsible correct academic practice that persists and assumes a hyperrational form -whatever that may mean. Shame on you people who ridicule this. Shame on you author for not doing this right.
Christopher Hitchens likes to claim that religion belongs to the childhood of humanity. To the extent that this is true--I don't really think of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Mahatma Gandhi as children--then making fun of religion must surely belong to the adolescence of humanity. With a three-year old daughter of my own, and vivid memories of my own adolescence, I'm not convinced that adolescence represents an advance over childhood. Nothing among the comments posted to this article prompts me to reconsider this conclusion.
Mr. Nilsson wrote:
"It refuses to account for the unprecedented levels of murder and mayhem perpetrated in the last century by the practical inheritors of this 'enlightenment,' such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, or those who reverted to Nordic polytheistic paganism."
Nilsson's argument conflates correlation with causation: atheism was never used as the justification for such atrocities.
There is no way to use atheism, alone, to justify anything because atheism merely gives you a blank ethical slate. Such a blank slate is not equivalent to wholesale permissiveness. Rather, the blank slate invites you to cover it with deep consideration of ethical and moral issues. It is here that the pariahs of atheism fail, not in the atheism itself.
The strongest charge you can make against atheism is that it removes the moral restrictions that would otherwise be present. But are humans so morally bankrupt that they require faith-motivated *prudential* reasons to act in a way that appears moral?
Marc Brukhes said: "To the extent that this is true--I don't really think of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Mahatma Gandhi as children--then making fun of religion must surely belong to the adolescence of humanity."
I'd consider the work of the "new atheists" quite a few steps above "making fun of religion." Furthermore, if I prove Gandhi picked his nose, that hardly makes such behavior part of the "adulthood" of humanity. Greatness in a person does not make every aspect of such a person great.
>Finally,the second commandment warns us(god-fearing or not)about idolatry-and this idol can be atheism
kind of a perrenial in the atheism debate -- the claim that atheism itself is a religion or in your formulation, a potential idol. but it is a false charge. all there is to atheism is is the lack of belief in something that is popularly claimed to be true. there's nothing else to it. no practice, no shrine, no community.
in terms of the second commandment, it is close to perfect -- it creates no idols.
Q: "Michaelson has let us know that he doesn't believe in an anthropomorphic god, nor in a literal interpretation of scripture. He separates himself from those who have a "primitive" notion of God. But what *is* his God, in rational terms? or, heck, in any kind of terms?"
A: I can't speak for Jay, but if you were to ask me that question, I would say God is a poetic metaphor that denotes and connotes all that's good and worthwhile in human beings who can relate to that metaphor. And that our tradition provides ritual drama to sustain that 'belief.'
Q: if his god is not antropomorphic, how is it that he has a 'relationship' with it and wants to address it as 'you'?
A: The same way that anyone who relates to a work of art, literature, painting, sculpture, dance, drama, relates.
Q: Does that mean that God is anthropomorphic,
A: No, it means rather that the concept God points to something bigger and grander than a human being,not as a supernatural being, but as a very natural process.
Q: " acknowledged to be a myth, a communally shared habit of mind, an ideal?"
A: Yes, why not, those sound like very natural, rationalistic ways of being human. And they relate to the idea of metaphors at work.
Q: "Does it mean he knows rationally that his God doesn't exist, but he procedes non-rationally as if he did?"
A: No, for me it means that the concept, the process, the idea exists and I lead a more productive and constructive life considering that God is one, and all life is one, and the uni-verse is one, too.
Q: "Or that God is indeed an incorporial, magical entity?"
A: No, silly, I just got through telling you that there is no such entity and the word is spelled ' incorporeal.'
David Strauss writes, adolescently, "if I prove Gandhi picked his nose, that hardly makes such behavior part of the 'adulthood' of humanity. Greatness in a person does not make every aspect of such a person great." But Gandhi's religion, like Heschel's and Dr. King's, was not a sideline in his/their career--it was the animating impetus and the moral center. Part of the problem with the "new atheism" arguments is the deliberate exclusion of any positive influence religion might play in a person's life; it's a cheap card trick--if a person managed to be religious and an admirable person (e.g., Dr. King), then his or her religiosity is immaterial to his/her good qualities, whereas if someone managed to be religious and a terrible person (e.g., Meir Kahane), then it was religion that impelled him/her to be a bigot/racist/terrorist, etc. The new atheists want to have it both ways, "heads I win, tails you lose."
And with respect at least to Mr. Hitchens, whose work I follow fairly closely--because in spite of the fact that I disagree with him about nearly everything, I still find him entertaining and provocative--I would disagree with David Strauss: it really is just making fun of other people's religion.
Just what we need. Another liberal, gay, misguided Jew. He's living proof that you can be intelligent yet have very little wisdom.
Sam Harris, at least when he was starting out, didn't label himself an "atheist." He simply argued that "faith," defined as belief in the absence of reliable evidence isn't an acceptable way to make public policy -- and shouldn't be excused as a justification for an individual's behavior. In this limited sense, I can't detect any difference between your position and his. So, I guess if we're playing the labeling game, that make you a "New Atheist," too.
You do a good job of proving the point advanced by the New Atheists. Your argument can be summed up as "I like the way it feels, so I think it is right" - the same can be said of any drug addict. Everything in your argument is circular and lacks any objective facts or proof. New Atheists, such as myself, see no difference between this and a belief in the tooth fairy.
It does not matter how eloquent your essay is when it is founded on a false, delusional, premise.
This is completely incorrect:
Religion, not meditation, does that — including in the Buddhist world, which, as Harris fails to mention, is just as full of ritual, deities, dogma and myth as the Jewish and Christian ones.
You didn't read the same Same Harris book I read. He specifically mentions the dogmatic aspects of buddhism. He simply rejects them as along with all other religious dogma. Here is his response to this kind of false claim:
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2903&Itemid=244
It's so funny: you sound so authoritative while making completely false statements. But then, you are a religious person. We need to call you out on these kinds of things. I hope lots of people do.
http://happynewatheist.blogspot.com/