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.”
Jason Coe said,
September 29, 2009 at 12:51 am
Wow, I haven’t heard about this book yet but when its available at my library I’m going to check it out. As an outspoken atheist I tend to get a kick out of theist rebuttals to the arguments Sam Harris, Dawkins, Dennet, etc make, especially when they’re ones made by very religiously liberal, and this author seems to be one, person such as Tina Beattie.
From what it sounds like, she subscribes to Reza Aslan’s view that religious stories/characters are not apart of history, but are a SACRED history, in that the importance are the messages they convey, not the historical basis of the people and events. So that begs and obvious question…..If that’s the case, what’s the difference between religion and mythology then?
Just out of curiosity, you said she rebutted the rationalist claims in the books written by the above mentioned atheists. What points in their books did she rebut?