If you want to understand something about real varieties of Islam, not the phantom "Islam" that comes out of a contextless reading of the Quran, there's no alternative to doing some serious studying. I don't mean spending half a lifetime on it—there are a good number of scholars whose job it is to study Islam. They're not all apologists, and they generally have interesting things to say. Read a book or two, and I don't just mean Islam-bashing books. It is, after all, possible to be a critic of Islam without frothing at the mouth in the process.Although Taner is specifically incensed against Harris' shallow treatment of Islam, I feel the same way about a lot of things I see coming out against Christianity. Honestly, I see in retrospect that a some of my earliest examinations of Christian beliefs were more superficial as these new ones by Harris and Dawkins. An extremely long review by Steve Hays of the Triablogue does root out some of the shallowness with which Dawkins dismisses Christian apologia.
Indeed, that's part of what's disappointing about garbage like what Sam Harris puts out. He writes as if there is no scholarly work being done on the Quran or Islam at all. He doesn't have to agree with it, but even if he thinks current scholarship about Islam is too apologetic in nature, he has the burden of arguing against academic views. There is no excuse for ignoring it and charging in with quotations from the Quran. As a result, Harris looks like a fool to anyone who has a serious, scholarly interest in Islam. And to the extent that skeptics of religion endorse such rants against an "Islam" very few Muslims would recognize as their religion, we collectively look like morons with an axe to grind.
Understand that I actually have the desire to know what is true, to the best of my own abilities. I do not want to prop up shallow scarecrow/strawman claims of Christianity (or any other religion) in order to display my prowess at knocking them down. That's part of why I linked to James Lazarus' post earlier: I agree with him that some of those arguments deserve a deeper look, and a second consideration.
However, C1; the claim that "religious language is meaningless," (I would prefer incoherent/unintelligible/non-veridical), I think remains as a solid argument. I also think that this claim ties in more directly to Dawkins' arguments, and would have buttressed them to make them more solid.
One of Dawkins' major arguments in the book is that it is more rational to believe that complex things come from stepwise, gradual change over time, guided by nautral laws, than to believe that the most complex thing we know of (God) just plain old exists and always has. Now, the reason I say that James' C1 analysis would be of much help here is that the standard definition of God, and the questions of ontology and existence, require a serious look.
James first delves into an analysis of C1 from the perspective of positivism -- the position that dismisses all claims of knowledge which have no basis in either: i) an analytical approach, or ii) observation/empiricism. James immediately deals with the most important rejoinder to positivism, its apparent intrinsic self-refutation -- how can we know the statement, "All reliable knowledge comes via empiricism, observation, or analysis"? Does that, itself, meet its own standard? Of more importance to C1 -- is it not at least theoretically possible for religious claims to be observed and verified? James' conclusion here is, "yes". I agree. Certainly if God wanted to prove itself to us, and decided to spend a few years down here on earth performing obvious miracles, confirming Its own power and goodness, and defying the laws of nature, then the proposition, "God exists," would principally be confirmed according to the demands of positivism.
James next examines the prong of the argument which, I will attempt to show, is not so easy to dismiss:
Smith argues, as Augustinian theologians have in the past, that we cannot describe God in positive language. We can only say what God is not, rather than what God is. However, at the same time, we could only say what God is not if we first had some sort of notion from the beginning about what God actually is. So the attempt to describe God and his characteristics in purely negative terms would collapse into the project of describing God and his characteristics in positive terms, which, according to Smith, is not something that we can do. The conclusion that would purportedly follow from this is that we cannot meaningfully refer to a “God” in our language at all.James next presents an alternative to the claims of Smith -- some positive definitions of God, as well as some limits to God:
[Smith] could have just as easily described omnipotence as “being able to do whatever it is that is logically possible to do”, which is clearly a positive description. Furthermore, the positive description that I’ve just given is much more in accord with what believers typically believe about the nature of God, in comparison with the definition that Smith gives us. So, from this end, Smith's argument has problems...Now we're getting somewhere. What James has done here is attempt to show that the formulations of C1 which depend upon Smith, or at least the way that James has described Smith (I must admit that although I possess the text in question, I have not yet been able to read it), are not wholly sound. I will actually grant him the benefit of the doubt (wrt presenting Smith and analyzing Smith accurately). Given that, I have to agree with him.
The classical view of God as literally infinite in character is no longer accepted by almost all theologians (was it ever predominant, really?), and furthermore the Bible itself describes limits to God's character. For instance, according to the Bible, God cannot lie (Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18). Now, Smith might argue that this is simply incoherent. However, it would only be incoherent if we already accepted Smith’s rather shallow analysis of the way in which believers speak and conceive of God. Since they clearly do not speak and conceive of God in the way that Smith lays out, all of his arguments, including this one, fail.
However, I do think that a strong case can be made that many aspects of the Christian religion are the equivalent of "square circles", rendering belief in these attributes of God illogical. When theists try to squeeze in some sort of notion that God exists "outside of time and space", for example, but is somehow able to manipulate/create them, we start to get to the crux of where my argument begins, and where it bifurcates from that of Smith. I will get into this more deeply in a future post.
Christianity has gone through numerous revisions and evolution over the past 2000 years, and some very great minds have tackled age-old objections to, and problems with, the faith. When we approach some of the most sacred and orthodox of Christian beliefs, such as prayer, the goodness of God, etc., with the care they require, we are not deluding ourselves into thinking that we've dealt with the best version of their arguments. Believers and unbelievers alike deserve the respect of giving our best shot at evaluating arguments for and against faith in God.
Now, what we ought to separate are serious philosophical investigations from cultural pleas. I think that Dawkins' latest work falls into the latter category, as do the works of Harris. I think there is a place for this sort of thing, and a need for it, and when attempting to influence culture (these men obviously have, for better or worse, as their works skyrocket up the bestseller list), we all recognize the painful truth that works on these subjects must be "dumbed down" to be read widely. In that sense, I understand why Dawkins and Harris write as they do -- they want to influence the masses, and recognize the folly of using a book with extensive footnotes and philosophical verbiage.
But mere cultural competition is something I hope that all persons, of faith or without it, come to detest. I hope that human culture evolves to a level of complexity that books on the subject of religion do their subject justice, and that they can be well and widely-received.
And that's why I said I wasn't going to buy Dawkins' book a while back, not that I don't appreciate the effort.
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