“Ponerangelism”
Posted on July 18th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Rod and Mark Shea have good posts on P.Z. Myers, whose spiritual insanity I had not been inclined to discuss earlier, since it seems that notoriety and attention are what atheist “propagandists of the act” seem to crave most of all. However, there was something in both posts that I noticed that I thought deserved a few words of comment. This concerns the use of the word evangelical in describing militant, aggressive atheists of Myers’ sort.
Shea:
C.S. Lewis describes the curious evangelical itch [bold mine-DL] that rankles in the shriveled soul of the God-hater in his Great Divorce.
I know what Rod, Shea (and Lewis) mean, and I don’t want to be pedantic, but it struck me that crediting atheists with an “evangelical” impulse misrepresents what compels them and it also unintentionally bestows on their message a value that Christians do not believe it possesses. This is not news to either of them or most anyone else, but since something evangelical properly pertains to good news and specifically to the Good News of the Gospel, it is not really fitting to attribute an evangelical impulse to proselytes of godlessness. We often refer to proselytism of various kinds, both ideological and religious, as evangelism, and today we may refer to episodes from marketing and politics as “spreading the Gospel of such-and-such,” but I think we would find it strange to use the word evangelical to describe Wahhabi proselytes.
With a nod to Dostoevsky, I don’t think it would be wrong to say that there is something especially demonic in this particularly aggressive sort of atheism. If what Myers has done (or claimed to have done) is evil, as Shea rightly notes, his desire to spread word of his evil-doing would have to be called ponerangelism.
Filed under: religion
It’s for this same reason that I have objected to Mark’s use of the term “sacrament of abortion” in referring to Democrats.
I’m familiar with the quote it is riffing off, and I get the point, but abortion can never deliver the grace that is present to beleivers in the sacraments, and to suggest so, even in mocking, is to diminish the sacraments.
While I might agree with your general sentiment, the fact is that aggressive, proselytizing atheists are, indeed, “evangelical” in the sense that they definitely do believe that they are preaching “good news” to the world, and combating the evil of religious belief. Just as one might call an Islamist preacher looking to make converts “evangelical”, even if one consider Islam to be false, it qualifies in that in the mind of the preacher he is bringing “good news” to those in need of conversion.
I’ve had a fair amount of contact with scientific atheists, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they have a religious zeal for their point of view, and a determination to combat any and all believers in any other viewpoint, religious or otherwise. In character if not in content they seem very much similar to the very evangelical fundamentalists they combat, which suggests a similarity in the style of their thought – intensely and exclusively “monotheistic”, in the sense that no other Gods but scientific ones are allowed.
I used to read Myers’s blog regularly; it was a source of news I was fascinated with. However, I got tired of the rest of the package. That he has done this should come as no surprise to anyone. His claim that he is only doing what he should do as someone who detests Christian ideas is nonsensical; he is simply a small, angry man without courage or discipline. (If he shredded a Koran, I could at least grant him the courage, but only of a foolish kind.)
It is interesting to me that the sort of vitriol Myers spews is common among biologists, but far rarer among physicists or geologists. In my time as a geology student, I had not one professor use his or her position to launch assaults on religious views, though only one (to my knowledge) had any religion. I contrast this to the biology professors I had, and the difference is night & day. They are what made me begin to suspect that there were metaphysical commitments behind modern biological science that were unclear to even their believers. My interest in pursuing that question ended up pushing me down another academic path, while not losing the first one entire.
I have heard that observation about the differences between biologists and physicists before. Someone once explained to me that this was related to biologists’ having to confront mutation and disease, while physicists were studying natural phenomena that did not cause concerns about theodicy. I’m not sure that this really explains anything at all, since it isn’t as if physicists (and everyone else) don’t know that mutation and disease exist. It may simply be that professional biologists are steeped in a particular academic culture that encourages or rewards atheism and agnosticism as the respectable beliefs, or maybe they were instructed that accepting evolutionary theory somehow required disbelief. Or maybe those who are already inclined to these beliefs are simply overrepresented in the field through a self-selection process. Who knows?
“It is interesting to me that the sort of vitriol Myers spews is common among biologists, but far rarer among physicists or geologists. . . . there were metaphysical commitments behind modern biological science”
This could very easily be explained by institutional factors rather than metaphysics, right? Let’s say you practice a profession, where the fundamental insight is anathema to a sizable segment of Americans, who proceed to launch mostly vacuous attacks on your vocation. You’d probably resent the hell out of that segment, regardless of any “metaphysical” beliefs. Modern biology is inseparable from an evolutionary theory that Creationists abhor and attack at every turn. If I were a biologist, I’d be pretty exasperated by these people, regardless of my own religious views.
For whatever reason, Plate Tectonics or Relativity simply don’t stir up the hornet’s nest the way evolution does, so those branches of academia can afford to stay out of the Culture War. Biology, however, is unavoidably political in this country.
None of this is an attempt to defend Myers, who sounds like an asshole.
I have heard that observation about the differences between biologists and physicists before.
Perhaps there is a greater hubris among biologists–many expect that science will be able to cure everything that ills humanity, including even old age and death. Perhaps paradoxically, given the reductionism of contemporary science, physicists are more readily confronted with the ‘ultimate questions’ than biologists, though in a proper ordering of the intellect, that which is more complex should inspire even greater awe and greater signs of the Divine.
“This could very easily be explained by institutional factors rather than metaphysics, right? ”
I think that this interpretation is tempting because, in democratic societies, we typically underestimate the importance of “Big Ideas” in driving history.
If biology wasn’t so heavily invested in the fervor of its world-view, I find it very unlikely that the religion question would be so intense–the fact that many non-liberal Christians have been able to find peace with evolutionary science, but not the ur-theory, is evidence of this.
Evolutionary biology has some deep roots in the metaphysical assumptions of the upper classes in England and America in the 19th century. These are assumptions that descend from the Deists of the Enlightenment, Continental philosophers and the belief in human progress (as enshrined in “whiggish history”). All the sciences were seen as being part of this triumph: the physics of Newton, the geology of Lyell, the work of the chemists, etc. Darwin’s remarkable little book was the last piece to a long-forming puzzle. (That Darwin’s ideas accelerated the shift to Social Gospel among upper & upper-middle class Christians seems relatively indisputable with hindsight on one’s side.) And that Deism was going to lead eventually to atheism, well, even a Unitarian such as John Adams could see that.
Physics underwent a remarkable revolution with Einstein and quantum mechanics which threw the clockwork mechanisms into disarray. This didn’t lead physicists to religion, but it put holes in the inviolability of the former world-view. Why this didn’t happen to biology, also, probably had to do with the class warfare that has often accompanied discussions of evolutionary biology, and the deep mutual hatred between it and another positivism: Protestant Biblical literalism. (Those who compare the new atheists to fundamentalists risk sounding cliche, but they never quite articulate why, either.)
James is incorrect to state that relativity or quantum mechanics don’t stir up the hornet’s nest in quite the same fashion as evolution. Newton’s “Book of Nature” was as dear to (most of!) the religious of the West as it was to the rising scientific secularists. You can still find people to this day that reject indeterminate scientific theories on religious grounds. (And on the secularist side, I do believe Ayn Rand had an affection for Newton and a hatred of Einstein, but I’ve never been able to read any of her books to know if this is true. I also recall a book I read in high school decrying the limited universe of most modern cosmologists, partly on the emotional ground that it wasn’t as friendly to theories of liberal progress. If I could correctly reach back to a title, I’d give it…)
Plate tectonics was worrisome (and still is!) to literalist interests because, formerly, geology was largely compatible with catastrophic, “Flood” theories that just wanted to compress the layering. To make another interesting point about the influence of philosophy of science (if not metaphysics exactly) there is an interesting case made by some historians of science that plate tectonics’s rapid acceptance (in a field known for its conservatives) was due to the fear of being on the down-side of a paradigm shift (Kuhn’s work and the development of the tectonic theory were contemporary).
Institutional factors in other sciences definitely favor secularists, but do not breed the sort of virulence found in many biologists. The reaction of people such as Dawkins to S.J. Gould, who tried to bring evolutionary biology into the realm of modern philosophy of science (this pervades his final work, “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory”) is fascinating. While I don’t think that Gould was entirely right, what punctuated equilibrium did as a theory was to take out (or modify) the gradualism of traditional evolutionary theory to keep it in harmony with the fossil record. (Dawkins–and other non-paleontologists dealing in evolution–often takes it for granted that the fossil record fits the theory perfectly, and overlooks the problems, which is the action of an ideologue, not a scientist.) That it incidentally (usually due to misunderstanding) made evolution more tasteful to some Christians was another issue. However, the biggest problem with the non-neo-Darwinian theories is that they don’t serve well as guiding ur-theories for modern biology, which means that biologists are still clinging (in part) to a 19th c. metaphysic that lies behind the creation of their theories. That they aren’t aware of this is no surprise, in part because mutual ignorance between theology, biology and philosophy has been encouraged. (Dawkins spoke of his critics once as minds ruined by a little learning in philosophy.)
Our host is right about the self-selection process, but this is largely due to sheer hostility, rather than “the sorts of minds that would like to do this work in the first place”.
Theodicy is an interesting comment, and is probably the particular problem of the evolutionary world-view. But that world-view is held overwhelmingly by scientists in all disciplines, whether secularist or not. (That Darwin found, of all things, the life cycle of inchneumon wasps to be proof against a beneficent God I’ve found to be a bit childish, but to each his own. Mass extinction is far more disturbing, and geologists are very aware of that!) I think that, insofar as theodicy is a concern for biologists it’s in that they have been told that this is a proof for their worldview, in a negative sense, and that you are not apt to be overly critical of arguments against views you’ve never considered holding, or have rejected without understanding. *shrug*
Wow, and I, uh, apologize for writing way more than I intended.
Let’s say you practice a profession, where the fundamental insight is anathema to a sizable segment of Americans, who proceed to launch mostly vacuous attacks on your vocation. You’d probably resent the hell out of that segment, regardless of any “metaphysical†beliefs. Modern biology is inseparable from an evolutionary theory that Creationists abhor and attack at every turn.
Actually the practice of modern biology is quite separable from the grand theory of evolution–belief in evolution is not needed for the analysis of living things into their constitutent parts with the aim of understanding the behavior of those parts at various levels.
“James is incorrect to state that relativity or quantum mechanics don’t stir up the hornet’s nest in quite the same fashion as evolution. Newton’s “Book of Nature†was as dear to (most of!) the religious of the West as it was to the rising scientific secularists. You can still find people to this day that reject indeterminate scientific theories on religious grounds.”
I’m aware that Relativity was quite controversial among some intellectuals in the 1930’s, and ludicrous hold-outs like Rand. But my comments were restricted to modern day America, hence the use of the present tense “don’t.” I encourage you to find school districts where text books containing relativity or quantum theory are banned or accompanied by warning-stickers. Or would-be leaders of the Republican party who proudly declare their disbelief in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
I can’t tease out enough from your post about the embedded world view of 19th Century biologists to argue the point, which I chalk up to my own ignorance.
As someone who has geology and history of philosophy on the brain, my idea of the present tense is sometimes twisted, so I apologize. As for why they aren’t a big deal now, I think it’s because proponents of those theories haven’t set them up as points to stand on in some sort of warfare. The multitude of different, contradictory theories in physics leads to a sort of epistemilogical humility (though obviously not always) that biology sees no reason to share.
As for your other comment, I admit I’m not being completely clear, but I’m trying to boil down what amounts to years of reading with this in mind into a blog comment, so it doesn’t suffer well–I mostly come off as scatter-brained.
If I could sum it up, I would note that the evolution of scientific naturalism in the West has many sources, most of them religious, which have led to sort of theological/metaphysical “ghosts” in the ways we look at science and the way science sees itself. I also suspect that there may be a correlation between sciences undergoing a Kuhnian paradigm shift and also becoming “updated” to more current ideas in the rest of its culture(s). (However, I’m not yet sure if history gives that idea enough gas.) To the extent that physics, for example, is famously philosophically confused nowadays, well, it certainly reflects our condition. :)
As for myself, I certainly do not side with the analytic or post-modern philosophers of science. I’m a realist, but not a naturalist. (Though I am willing to admit methodological naturalism.)
If we say that the rabid atheists are spreading “bad news”, that suggests that what they are spreading is true, if unwholesome. So whether “ponerangelism” is an acceptable substitute depends on whether the “angel” component implies truth (as the English “news”) or whether it is neutral as to truth (as the English “message”). It would be worth looking up uses of angellos and related terms to check. I’m in favor of pedantry, but it should go all the way.
Daniel Larison says,
This is precisely correct. Christians have been saying that no true believer could possibly believe in evolution since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species. It hasn’t been all Christians, but it’s a large enough fraction that biologists are perfectly justified in looking at religion in general with suspicion and dislike.
In my understanding, angelos and all related words in Greek refer to a messenger and the sending of messages. The “good news” rendering of Evangelion is a modern idiomatic English usage that is not identical with the Greek meaning. The value of the message would depend on its content, and not on how it is being conveyed.
I thought ‘eu’ was translated as ‘good’?
It is. That’s why I replaced it with its opposite in the post. Maybe my last comment confused things–the last sentence is supposed to refer back to the first.
Ev-Demon-ical. That’s the word. And their desacraments that confer the disfavor instead of grace.
But you cannot describe the gospels as good news in the conventional sense.
In the PZaro world, you don’t have to take up your cross daily. Suffering has no meaning so if things get too annoying you can end it. You are the highest good, so why deny yourself? No true responsibility to anyone. No good or evil, just urges programmed over aeons into our neurons.
Remember the “good news” is reconciliation with God. Not an end to the temporal trials and tribulations. Jesus’ promise is that he has overcome the world in a true sense although we still have death and disease.
You mistake the argument if you try to put PZ as arguing against a “nice” Gospel. No, the bible says there is a point to righteousness and suffering separate, and even more combined. It also says “if you do not gnaw on my (Jeusu) flesh… you have no life in you”. If this is a lie, PZM is moderate in his reaction. The problem is that it is true.
There are many who attend church who will enter hell because they can only accept a nice doting uncle as God, not a Father who wants you to do the family name proud. PZM is actually closer to heaven as he at least acts on the implications of the truth as he sees it.
If it really IS Jesus, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the tabernacle, few who believe in it demonstrate it as well as atheists demonstrate their unbelief.
Since semantic/etymological concerns have already come up, I did have a question, out of idle curiosity: any particular reason that you opted for “ponerangelism” rather than “kakangelism”?
Ho Poneros is the word used in the Our Father to refer to the devil as “the evil one,” so it seemed more appropriate.