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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Beating Dawkins over the Head in England7/28/2007 10:47:14Reporting from "Science and Religion: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives," a Templeton Foundation-funded conference at Lancaster University in northern England. Gathered here are some of the leading lights of the English science and religion scene, especially those attuned to historical rather than theological questions. I'm not sure how totally relevant this will be for where my mind is, but already I've had some great conversations, which leaves me feeling quite grateful so far. First, I'd like to try laying out what seem to me to be some assumptions from the "science and religion" crowd.
This is important work and people I have a lot to learn from, yet something about the field of inquiry seems contradictory. The whole project seems after this odd grail quest of discovering the reconciliation of science and religion, as if they were two warring kids on the playground. Everybody has their own nuanced version of what the whole relationship is supposed to be. The subject matter, studying the conflicts of science and religion, works against the ambition, a reconciliation. I am inspired, though, to meet a woman here from Boston University who is actually a student in a "science and religion" degree program. Fortunately, rather than carrying on with the old academic problems, she is trying to do more practical work on religious critiques of metrics for environmental sustainability. Perhaps this kind of approach will lead to more productive academic problems. But Richard Dawkins. Nearly every talk I heard today ripped into the guy, totally out of the blue, just because. Well, we've seen this before: he's the one making millions writing on science and religion while we're still talking to each other. He's the one that our unwashed friends always ask us about to start a conversation. It is all the same stuff that Dawkins's reviewers have been saying so repeatedly it has become orthodoxy: he's simplistic, he doesn't understand religion, he's a pompous ass, etc. The rage! Paradoxically, this seems to me a profound confirmation: Richard Dawkins has written an important book (The God Delusion) that people will be talking about for a long time. He (and others) have done much to carve a semi-habitable atheism for the 21st century. There is no way to avoid talking about him right now. He points out our contradictions, or worse, makes all our readers suspicious of us. In my view, I am glad Richard Dawkins is Richard Dawkins. Secretly these guys are too, since it means they can unite around hating him. I am sorry it blinds people from recognizing just how good at what he does Dawkins is. But I am also glad that there are other people besides Richard Dawkins, people a little less militant who can mostly agree with him but then help us come to terms with the idolatrous religiosities, help us to appreciate them, mine their wisdom, experience their erotic and agapeic delights, and give them, roughly as Gershom Scholem put it, the "decent burial" they deserve. Because they'll be back before we know it.
re:Beating Dawkins over the Head in England - 6/16/2010 16:23:06
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