A.C. Grayling: An Extended Yawn

Philosopher A.C. Grayling has a forthcoming book to promote. Hence, an article in today's Sunday Times which begins as follows.

"Nobody can have failed to notice that there is a noisy quarrel going on between religion and its opponents. The success of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion has raised the stakes between those who think religion is an important part of life, and those who see it as a hindrance to progress and truth. The different faiths, for their part, have become increasingly assertive in recent years, wanting public funding for their faith-based schools and new laws to protect them from satire and criticism."

The trouble with Grayling's numerous, often wildly furious anti-religion polemics is that they are staggeringly simplistic. He is a high-flying academic while I am but an oik, yet it is screamingly obvious from this first paragraph that A.C. lives in an ivory tower divorced from everyday social reality. His whole position is based upon a false opposition, the one he posits between "those who think religion is an important part of life" - savour the derision inherent in his use of the word "think" - and, by implication, vastly superior people such as him. This crude reduction of a complex question to a "them and us" argument runs through all Grayling's pronouncements on it. It is easy to see why - it is the bogus polarity he depends in order to continue be paid to hold forth about the subject. Without it, he'd have to start writing more subtly and his share of the polemicist market would certainly shrink accordingly. He continues:

"One of the most significant aspects of the quarrel between religious and nonreligious people concerns morality. Religious people think that morals are undermined if they are not securely based on a belief in God. The more austere among them think the pursuit of pleasure and the desire for possessions have promoted selfishness and frivolity at the expense of moral principle: 'the good life' has, they say, supplanted 'living a life of goodness'."

Careful Professor! Why, that reference to "the more austere" almost amounts to a qualification! An acknowledgement that not all "relgious people" think the same way, any more than do all we atheists!

"Is this true? Is 'the good life' incompatible with a good life? On the face of it there seems little reason why these ambitions should be inconsistent yet the prevailing view, based on religion, has been that 'the good life' cannot be morally good, on the grounds that pleasure and the desire for material possessions undermine one’s moral fibre — a view dear to the more conservative groups of Muslims and Christian evangelicals."

"The 'prevailing view...has been that 'the good life' cannot be morally good? Where has he been? And, oh dear, once more he's specifying "the more conservative groups." At this rate he'll end up compromising that crucial stereotype of "religious people" altogether.

"As it happens, people who seek pleasure and material comforts have often enough given religious moralists cause for concern — think of Roman banquets, Renaissance feasts and Regency excesses..."

Oh, so were Roman banquets and Renaissance feasts conducted in defiance of religious mores and authority? Was deference to gods and God never, in fact, integral to the celebration of an indulgence in plenty? Were prayers never said before, during or after them? And given that such wassailing would have been confined to the rich, might the objections of those "relgious moralists" not have been at least in part informed by a disgust at the excesses of the elite rather than some general disapproval of pleasure? Grayling shows no sign of having asking himself such questions. Perhaps the prospect of discovering a nuanced answer is too much for him to bear. Instead, he askes a question.

"But do we need religion to tell us what goodness is?"

No, Tone, we don't. Now how about asking us something interesting? Not a chance.

"For most of history people believed that human beings are quite different from the rest of nature because they possess reason and language. They unquestioningly assumed that humanity was created by God, who gave each individual an immortal soul. In medieval times humanity was seen as the central point between earth and heaven, standing at the pivot of the great chain of being that extended from the lowliest worm to God himself. Given this view, it is no surprise that what was regarded as good was whatever would save man from his beastly physical nature and its appetites, in order to prepare him for the felicity of life after death. Pleasures and possessions were therefore dangerous, because they distracted his attention from his heavenly goal. There is a great difference between this view and one that sees humanity as part of nature."

Duh. A "great diffference"? So did the medievals think that nature - defined here as everything on Earth but humans - was created by something other than God? I mean, who did they think supplied that "lowliest worm"? Worms-R-Us?

"This was what the ancient Greeks like Aristotle thought. They praised friendship, the quest for knowledge, and the appreciation of beauty, as the greatest human pleasures. The focus of their attention was this world and its benefits, and they debated intelligently about how to make the most of them. The central part of their enjoyment of this-worldly pleasures was of course not congenial to religious minds..."

So Aristotle didn't believe in God, right? Wrong.

"...so it had to wait for the Renaissance to be rediscovered. The Renaissance thinkers argued that man is a part of nature, and that it is natural to celebrate what pleases the five senses — colours and tastes, scents and sensations, music and the lover’s touch. Today’s science has confirmed this Renaissance intuition. We know from biology and genetics how much we are part of nature, and how much all the things that were once thought to distinguish humankind from other animals are in fact widely shared by them."

Or widely not shared if you are on the left politically and consider gene-o-maniacs like Richard Dawkins to be a new kind of conservative theologian. Still, we can't expect A.C. to challenge conventional thinking can we?

"The first full realisation of this truth came with Darwin, and has since been overwhelmingly attested from a thousand different proofs. It tells us that the range of this-worldly things people find to appreciate in life and the things that give them pleasure and satisfaction are as natural to them as the desire for food and drink. This is why there is nothing wrong with the pleasures and possessions of 'the good life'..."

You don't say!

"...they are what people naturally seek and even need (provided they are not enjoyed at the expense of someone else, and so long as the business of acquiring them does not become an obsessive end in itself)."

That's it, Professor! Keep those inconvenient complications buttoned up nice and tight between brackets. Let them loose and who knows how untidy things might get in your neat little world of glib prejudice! After all, some religious objectors might only be concerned by the emotional shallowness or exploitation of others that often lies behind the obsessive pursuit of pleasures or the accumulation of possessions rather than with pleasures or possessions of themselves. Eeek! Make that nasty fisker go away!

"Contrary to the religious anxiety about 'the good life', then, it is arguable that pleasures and possessions not only make life enjoyable, but they make other positive things possible too..."

Yes, indeed, Mrs Thatcher.

"The better things are in one’s own life, the more good one can do in other people’s lives. One of the best things anyone can have is successful relationships with friends, family and community. That is quite different from the mistaken picture of 'the good life' as something selfish or debauched."

Very true. So why confuse the two things as has been done throughout this article?

"Here then is a way of deciding between the religious and nonreligious view of morality. The rich tradition of thought stemming from ancient Greece teaches that there is no conflict between 'the good life' and a life that is morally good. The opposite view disagrees with this because it says that mankind should avoid being too much part of nature. This is the key disagreement in the debate about morality, religion and the good life, a debate still raging between the devout and the rest of us today. The question we each need to ask is: which side am I on?"

Nope! It's not "the key disagreement" and we don't need to ask which side we are on because the two sides are not always or inevitably opposed. Sure, there are strong currents within much religious doctrine that disapprove of certain "natural" pleasures and the appreciation of worldly goods per se. Yet often that disapproval is of a preoccupation with those things to the exclusion of charity, noble self-sacrifice or generosity towards others, not unlike those of, say, socialist atheists.

But Grayling's most glaring blind spot is his inability or disinclination to recognise that in the real world religious people are not, to misappropriate Dawkins's dismal characterisation, "lumbering robots" programmed to blindly obey religious leaders or doctrine any more than any kinds of people are enslaved by their genes. Even the most spooked make some sort of accommodation with worldly desires and see no irresolvable contradiction between them. Most, meanwhile, simply take what they think the best from what religious instruction they may have received and reject the stuff that they don't like. To me this is so fantastically obvious it's barely worth discussing. But in the small, cloistered world of such as A.C. Grayling this banal truth seems far too profound to contemplate.

Comments

[Francis Sedgemore]

Dave - This over-reaction is quite uncharacteristic of you. Now, I'm as tired as you of the silly secular-religious battles being waged in forums such as CiF. I'd rather that they shut up completely, but better that people let off steam in cyberspace than on the street. Grayling's writing on religion is strident, and entirely suited to the spaces in which it is published. That's the nature of contemporary comment journalism.

Hanging your initial attack on Grayling on his use of the word "think" is a bit much. If it had been me writing that article, I would have phrased the sentence something like "...The God Delusion has raised the stakes between those for whom religion is an important part of life, and those who see it as a hindrance to progress and truth.". And I suspect Grayling would have worded it thus had he been a little more careful. I think you are reading too much into Grayling's linguistic sloppiness, which extends to the Sunday Times piece as a whole.

Grayling undoubtedly missed an opportunity with that article. It raises some important points, only to spoil it all with some rather offhand remarks. But this is no reason to damn the man as you have here.

As for your introductory words, what if someone had written: "Professional dad Dave Hill has a forthcoming book to promote. Hence another article in the Guardian about urban family life."?

[Simon Barrow]

Some fair points, made with passion, Dave. It really is sad when good people and good minds (like Tony Grayling's) allow their judgement to be overcome by visceral dislike - in this case of anything 'religious', whatever that means. In the real world, as you say, religion involves everything from non-theistic philosophical Buddhism to the prescriptive platitudes of the US Christian religious right. There is vast diversity among the non-religious, too, in case AC hadn't noticed. An incantation to reason doesn't resolve deep disagreement any more than an incantation to God or gods. So putting two tanks (one labelled religious and the other labelled non-religious) into battle is a pretty hopeless exercise.

You'd have thought that anyone who'd spent more than a couple of moments thinking about these things would hesitate before using a phrase like "the religious and [the] nonreligious view of morality" (as if they amounted to one straightforward bifurcation) - but the temptations of punditry seem to nuke nuance. FWIW, moral reasoning in the Christian tradition (alone) has embraced a huge range of approaches and outcomes. Some start from deontology (arguments about duty), others from virtue and narrative (forming communities of character), some from institutional authority (hierarchies of values as bearers of continuity), others from context and change (liberation ethics), and so on. Then there's Alasdair Macintyre's "three rival versions of moral enquiry" - encylcopaedia, geneaology and tradition... and much, much more. It's a rich and complex picture.

The practical point is that both 'religious' and 'non-religious' people find themselves located in household arguments about these things. That's life. They are going to disagree - both within and across those divides. Finding ways to disagree usefully is what civilization is about. But it depends upon cherishing the liberality involved in trying to appreciate (and contend with) each others' best arguments, rather than pitching what we have to offer against a crude, homogenized caricature of everybody else. Not that AC, Dawkins et al are alone in this. Certain kinds of religious people do it all the time too. The consolation is that even bad arguing is better than actual fighting.

Anyway, forgive me for sounding off on your space. I've thought about a CIF piece, but it probably wouldn't cut any ice. These days everyone talks up their claim to rationality, but then disdains actually being rational.

[Chris]

Hi Dave,

Grayling didn't say that Aristotle didn't believe in God(s). As a philosopher who has specialised in Ancient Greek philosophy, i think he knows. Re-read his piece.

By the way, Dave. Are you religious?

[Dave Hill]

Chris: No, I'm not religious (I refer to myself as one of 'we atheists" above). My point about Grayling and Aristotle is that, as you say, the former must know perfectly well that the latter deferred to celestial entities AS WELL AS developing ways of thinking consistent with a non-religious viewpoint. However, in his article he makes no acknowledgement of this. Could that be because Aristotle saw no contradiction between belief and exploring the morality of worldly affairs - a possibility Grayling's argument dismisses as impossible whereas, in fact, in everyday life, it happens all the time. Grayling constructs false oppositions in order to foment a controversy that is not, in the end, especially important. He has far more to offer on other subjects. On this one, he's just academia's equivalent of a pub bore.

[David Millar]

Yes. Completely over-the-top reaction. The simple truth is that people who 'believe' in a super-natural creator are in need of mental health intervention

[Dave Hill]

Well, well, David Miller - what a thoroughly irrational, bigoted and unscientific observation.

[Simon Barrow]

Participating in religious comunities and developing ethical and other convictions within them is not, incidentally, for a great many people, a matter of "deferring to celestial entities". Nor do the notions of "a super-natural creator" referred to in David Millar's splendid troll equate at all with what the best minds in the church and elsewhere have understood by God. Of course deeming the great majority of humankind insane saves a lot of effort in actually thinking about these things. But it doesn't do a lot to commend the rationality of (some of) the anti-religious. Dave, on the other hand, is trying to inject some welcome sense into the debate (read: shouting match). Good on him. Incidentally, for those who may be interested, over at Ekklesia we are involved in some work on inclusive models of secularity at the moment - a related but distinct issue: Reconsidering the secular.

[Francis Sedgemore]

Dave - Grayling may indeed be the academic equivalent of a pub bore, but the British opedosphere has in recent years turned into a kind of intellectual Weatherspoons.

I think we should be careful to distinguish modern religious faith – where belief, even among neopagans, is in a single, omnipotent creator – from the pantheisms of old.

The Greeks were very into classifying and compartmentalising things, and there are serious contradictions between their humanist metaphysics and crude religion, much of which was pseudo-divine mythos designed to highlight aspects of the all-too-human condition.

The Greeks used philosophy and religion as we might handy tools picked up from B&Q, and this carried through to the Christian Church's hitching of Aristotelian philosophy onto an edifice of borrowed superstition.