{"id":5269,"date":"2013-03-03T13:53:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T13:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=5269"},"modified":"2024-04-30T12:42:55","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T12:42:55","slug":"gradgrinds-de-nos-jours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/gradgrinds-de-nos-jours\/","title":{"rendered":"Gradgrinds de nos jours"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/blockquote>\n

Peter Hitchens reviews the latest jeremiad from Anthony Grayling in The Spectator<\/em>, here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Atheism is to theism,\u2019 Anthony Grayling declares, \u2018as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting\u2019.\u00a0 At this point, we are supposed to enjoy a little sneer, in which the religious are bracketed with bald, lonely men in thick glasses, picking over their collections of ancient stamps in attics, while unbelievers are funky people with busy social lives.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

But the comparison is flatly untrue.\u00a0 Non-collectors of stamps do not, for instance, write books devoted to mocking stamp-collectors, nor call for stamp-collecting\u2019s status to be diminished, nor suggest \u2014 Richard Dawkins-like \u2014 that introducing the young to this hobby is comparable to child abuse.\u00a0 They do not place advertisements on buses proclaiming that stamp-collecting is a waste of time, and suggesting that those who abandon it will enjoy their lives more.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

Professor Grayling is too pleased with himself to have realised this. Intoxicated with amusement at his own dud metaphor, he asks: \u2018How could someone be a militant non-stamp-collector?\u2019\u00a0 I rather think he has written the manual for anyone who might like to take up this activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

It strikes me, once again, that the new atheists – particularly Grayling, Dawkins, Dennett, and C. Hitchens<\/a> –\u00a0want to show the world that they can think for themselves, that they are beholden not to churchly prince nor earthly potentate, neither to ideology nor\u00a0tradition, in the formulation and articulation of their own views.\u00a0\u00a0 But thinking for themselves seems somehow insufficient to each of these people:\u00a0 they want also to think for everyone else, to impose on the rest of us their own personal view.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps it’s that common affliction of people lacking in self-confidence:\u00a0 by getting others to adopt\u00a0their judgments (or\u00a0beliefs, or consumer purchases, or career path),\u00a0they can validate\u00a0their own choices.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

As I have remarked before<\/a>, in my experience most people who profess religious belief and\/or undertake religious practices do so because of some personal, transcendant experience they have had with non-material realms, or what they perceive to be such realms.\u00a0 Grayling\u00a0et al. <\/em>tell all these people that they are each wrong:\u00a0 Here’s what you should believe, not the evidence of your own lying eyes!<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 Who knows, our little Graylings may even be correct, and objective science may even – one day long in the future – show the delusion or invalidity of these many billions of subjective experiences.\u00a0But, in the meantime,\u00a0it surely takes industrial-strength levels of presumption to assume that your own personal subjective viewpoint takes precedence over the subjective lived experience of others.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0
\nNoticeable too, is\u00a0the complete absence of any sense of wonder or awe at the unknown and the not-yet-explained in the writings of these folks (Sam Harris excepted).\u00a0\u00a0 It is remark-worthy, I think, that none of these people are poets, or artists, or musicians, or mathematicians, all people\u00a0who seek regularly to wrangle the transcendent.\u00a0\u00a0 Gradgrinds the new atheists\u00a0seem to be, as well as arrogantly presumptious.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peter Hitchens reviews the latest jeremiad from Anthony Grayling in The Spectator, here: \u2018Atheism is to theism,\u2019 Anthony Grayling declares, \u2018as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting\u2019.\u00a0 At this point, we are supposed to enjoy a little sneer, in which the religious are bracketed with bald, lonely men in thick glasses, picking over their collections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-religion","p1","y2013","m03","d03","h13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12537,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5269\/revisions\/12537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}