R. Joseph Hoffmann, religious scholar, former chair of the
Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, and former associate
editor of the journal Free Inquiry is a good secular humanist in many ways.
He’s insightful enough about the realities of religion, and
knowledgeable enough about the history of secular humanism, that Gnu Atheists
can’t refute most of his claims against their atheist evangelism and the
concepts on which it is built.
But, in a blog post like this, “
Complacency and Excess,” he
earns the title above: “frenemy of modern secular humanism.” I’m not a fan of
neologisims that are Internet or entertainment derived, but I make an exception
in this case.
I’ve said before that Hoffmann’s brand of humanism is an
Enlightenment-era humanism, one from the era when scientists were still
“natural philosophers.” I don’t know if Free Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz was
quite as much that way as Hoffmann is, but Hoffmann is definitely that way.
For example, in a blog post of about a month or two ago, which
I blogged about without linking to, sadly, he
went beyond criticizing overblown claims some neuroscientists make for what
tools like fMRIs of today show about brain functioning to, at least as I saw
it, criticizing the entire idea of daring to make too much scientific
investigation of what the mind is.
The “frenemy” part, and related concerns, starts here:
Let me stay with that last point for a minute–the belief
that only science can answer all of our questions.
While it’s true that many Gnus believe that, not all do.
More to the point of my previous critique, successors to fMRIs, CT scans,
single-emission positron scans, etc., may just reveal much more of the brain’s
working, on a smaller scale, and in something nearer to “real time.”
Next comes a “huh” comment like this:
Can the numinous collapsing of all empirical religious
traditions into the word “religion” (equivalent to the equally mystical
collapsing of all scientific inquiry into the word “science”) be justified on
the basis of a prior assumption–because that’s what it is–that gods don’t
exist?
I agree with the idea behind the first half of the quote.
Liberal Episcopaleanism is nothing like the Church of Christ, for example. But,
the part in parenthesis is a head-scratcher, at the least.
First of all, when did “collapsing” become “mystical” in
this instance? Second, is Hoffmann confounding “science” with “scientism”? Take
away “mystical” and I’d agree with his parenthetical observation IF that is the
case. But, IF that is the case, then Hoffmann’s engaging in either sloppy
verbiage or goalpost shifting.
And there's more that to come, if you'll look below the fold.
Next, there’s this:
(D)oes “subject matter” mean a certain kind of theology? Or
does it mean (I think is often does in new atheist harangues) apologetics–which
is unknown in many religious traditions?
Well, it IS known outside of Christianity. Islam certainly
has an apologetic tradition, albeit less than Christianity. Judaism does to a
degree, also. Polytheistic traditions are less likely to do so, perhaps. But,
even they do to a degree. And, as their face-to-face contact with Western
empiricism grows, their apologetics will, too.
Hoffmann knows his Greek, and knows that an “apologia” is
simply a “defense.” Whether it’s a more “active” defense, as shown above all in
American Christianity, and somewhat in the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world, or a
more passive defense like Buddhism’s moving target about what constitutes the
“life force” that is reincarnated, well, that’s still apologetics.
But, let’s get to the next wrong quote:
Predictably, I am going to say that the best
theologians–those who still mistakenly think they have a “subject matter”–are
aware of the sovereignty of science over theology in terms of explaining
everything from the cosmos to human origins and nature. And they have seen it this
way for a long time.
Nonsense.
I think everybody would call the Dalai Lama a theologian in
a metaphorical sense, while allowing for him not believing in a personal
divinity, a personal theos (unless he believes in the old, old Tibetan pantheon
of gods and demons).
Anyway, the Dalai Lama, allegedly a great ground-mover in
reconciling science and religion, is on record as saying more than once if
science presents evidence it strongly claims clearly shows the nonexistence of
either karma or reincarnation, science goes out the door.
In the Christian world, I’ve no doubt the Archbishop of
Canterbury, for example, still believes in some sort of immaterial,
metaphysical “soul” and, in the case of things like teratomas, brain-conjoined
Siamese twins, etc., rejects inferences from science about the nonexistence of
souls, i.e., does the “bit of human” teratoma have a “bit of soul” inside the
full human “host”?
Next comes this fun one, where Hoffmann shows not much more
political insight than P.Z. Myers:
Atheists, as usual, weren’t quite sure what to do (about the
Iraq War) because while many hated George W. Bush they hated Islam more and
so–like Christopher Hitchens–they backed the wars. They were, in a phrase,
paralyzed and morally invisible.
Tosh, or bull, or, per an above comment of mine, sloppy.
Is he saying all atheists weren’t sure what to do, not just
Gnus? He’s very wrong there, as I can personally attest. And, speaking of P.Z.,
I don’t think he ever supported the war. I don’t know about a Dan Dennett, a
Vic Stenger or other leading Gnus, other than to say most of them weren’t
focused on this, perhaps.
Finally, Hoffmann makes a simply unsubstantiated claim that
a scholar of religion, or at least of the sociology of religion, shouldn’t
have:
Complacency is what killed European Christianity. The fruits
and comforts of the industrial revolution killed it. Not education and science;
not curiosity; not Darwin’s dangerous idea. Just the creeping rot of not really
giving a damn about anything.
Nonsense. Western Europe had pretty high church attendance
rates, fairly high “religiosity,” etc., until World War II. Nazism, the
Holocaust, and the realization that in many countries, especially Catholic
ones, religious leaders were at least partially acquiescent in Nazism’s rise,
is what killed Christianity in Europe as much as anything.
As for his paean to Stephen Jay Gould and his
“nonoverlapping magisterial,” plenty of non-Gnu Atheists find it wanting. It’s
really just a science-based riff on the old “god of the gaps,” retitled as “religion
of the gaps.” Again, for Hoffmann to not see that as being what it is leads me
to raise an eyebrow.
And why, between this and his seeming Enlightenment-era gravitas, he is indeed a frenemy of modern secular humanism. And, why I hope that some of my online friends see that while he can be a useful A-list ally, he's not close to a fantastic one.
UPDATE: On his latest blog post, he spells "favoUrite" the British way, too. For a native American to do this is a bit of pretentiousness, in my book.
And, per this column, he appears to pull his punches on the question of the historicity of Jesus AND the worthiness of study of whether he existed and who he was, if he did.
Elsewhere, Hoffman has claimed the Toledoth Yeshu is more historical than the Christian gospels. In reality, per this extensive critical commentary,
it was a "book" that relied on oral tradition as much as the Mishna if
not the Talmud, and even after something close to its final state was
put in book form, was extensively added to by Christians and Jews both.
