08.15.09
The New Atheists - Tina Beattie’s Book
Over the weekend, I just read “The New Atheists” by Tina Beattie. It was supposed to be a rebuttal of course to “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and the similar books by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Well, she did a good job of refuting the rationalism in the claims these guys made in their books.
But the more interesting part comes just at the end. Here she begins to compare God to an author and religious truths to fiction novels. She says in Wuthering Heights for example, the fact that we know that Cathy and Heathcliffe are not real people does not detract from the capacity of these characters to communicate something truthful about the human condition. Though she does not come out and say so, she is implying here that we can apply a similar understanding to religious concepts. If the characters in the Bible never existed, well, no matter. They can still teach us something truthful about the human condition. I like that! ….except - doesn’t that make joining a religion something like joining a fiction fan club, where more than half of the members don’t even realize the books are fiction??
Then, in what I thought was a particular stroke of genius, Tina Beattie went on to explain how in some works of fiction, the less inspired ones, the characters all behave in an orderly way and kind of “prove” the viewpoint of the author. But in others - obviously the most intriguing ones - the characters and the book seem to take on a life of their own and no longer obey the “intention” the author might have had when he started writing the book. Books, works of art, any form of personal expression, Beattie says, all respond best when “creative expression” is allowed to guide the artist or author, even if it means the work gets out of his control.
The reason Beattie brings this up is to show that where the concept of Intelligent Design leaves a lot of logical flaws, maybe we should be comparing “god” to the artist with creative genius - who who set our world and creation in motion…and then allowed the characters and the story to take off with a life of their own.
There is much, much more to Beattie’s treatise than I can possibly present here. All I wanted to do was mention a few of the points she makes. She is a marvelously eloquent writer and the book is well worth reading. My favorite quote from another part of the book where she is talking about the role of the Catholic Church to control contraception and abortion and she mentions a new generation of Catholic adults who “simply do not invite priestly scruitiny of our sex lives and child-bearing capacities.”