http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/04/freethinking_ruins_all_things.html


Freethinking Ruins All Things


Slate has started publishing excerpts from Christopher Hitchens' new
book (so very cleverly titled God Is Not Great), the first of which is
here. The argument he advances is certainly not new, nor does Hitchens
say that it is. He takes some satisfaction that his objections have
been recycled time and again. His "mildest" criticism that religion is
man-made is supposed to be the stab to the heart, the "most
devastating" thing one can say about religion. If this is the case,
the religious people of the world can rest easy and return to
quarreling with one another, leaving the pestiferous atheist to abuse
someone else's patience with his tedious declarations of
enlightenment.

At the heart of every freisinning appeal is a lie. They want free
inquiry, Hitchens says, but there is no such thing. Every inquiry must
at least have a purpose or a reason. Inquiry is never really free--it
always has a cost, it always has limits and definitions and it always
entails assumptions. To assume one thing is to exclude another; the
freedom of choice, strictly speaking, is likewise not really free,
because it presupposes the denial of myriad choices, the acceptance of
the costs of the paths not taken, the constant constraints and
finitude that limit the range of choice. The atheists and freethinkers
say they want openmindedness, but their minds are plainly shut off to
the fountains of wisdom of thousands of years because the wisdom
contained in scriptures and hymns--from which virtually all great
Western art and literature derive and to which all of it pays often
unwitting tribute--is expressed in an idiom and attributed to a source
that they reject out of hand because they cannot confirm in their
wretched narrowness of spirit that the Author of life has spoken to
men on the doubtful basis that He has never spoken to them (though it
seems they would not listen to Him if He did).

Freethinkers supposedly want "the pursuit of ideas for their own
sake," but no one pursues ideas simply for their own sake, but in
order to understand, to act or to believe, or to have some combination
of these. Men pursue ideas so that they may understand the world, and
they seek to understand the world to have wisdom. Men desire wisdom in
order to live well, and part of living well is to pursue and know the
Good, and the Good is that which fulfills human nature and causes it
to flourish. The desire to know is a natural desire, one implanted in
us as part of our created being; we yearn to know and to enter into
the unknown because we yearn for unity with the One Who desires that
all things be united in Him. If no religion had ever caused men to
live virtuously and flourish, religion would have disappeared ages
ago. If no religion had produced saints and cultivated the finest
aspects of human nature, very few would adhere themselves to it and
even then it would only be the mad and obsessive. There is nothing
interesting in rehearsing the catalogue of crimes that religious
adherents have committed against each other, since men have always
been slaughtering and oppressing one another and they have tended to
do more of it when they are less in thrall to their religious
tradition than when they are strictly obedient to it. What is
remarkable is how much at least some religions have contributed to the
civilisation and edification of men, which would hardly seem probable
if they were not much more than elaborate exercises in self-deception
and nonsense.

I know that when Hitchens says "'man-made," he means that he thinks
religion is purely and completely the product of the human mind, an
invention, a fraud. He thinks he has the religious fellow cornered by
saying this, as if religious people are unaware that the history of
the religions of the world is also the history of man. The
inextricability of religious practice from human experience over the
millennia is supposed to be proof that there is nothing true in any of
it, as if it were not the remedy for that which ails man or as if it
did not provide something that man requires by nature. But, of course,
religion is man-made. Men build the temples, write the prayers,
organise the rites and offer the oblations and sacrifices. That does
not mean that there is no divinely inspired and true religion. It
means that it is not always immediately self-evident and clear which
is the true religion, and it means that those who have opted for the
sterile, sad path of "freethinking," which is simply to inhabit a
particularly wearisome set of prejudices, have simply lost patience in
trying to discern the truth of the matter. They do not want free
inquiry--they want easy inquiry, an inquiry that never leaves one in
aporia, but always promises explanation and resolution. The typical
freethinker believes that he is at home with uncertainty, and that it
is the religious man who is in dire need of certainty, but the
opposite is quite obviously true: the freethinker cannot really stand
to have loose ends, puzzles or paradoxes. If this, then that is
impossible, the freethinker says. The religious man not only assumes
that paradox will occur, but he takes the paucity of reason to explain
paradox as an indirect confirmation that there are realities that not
even reason, as estimable and valuable as it is, can penetrate or
comprehend. Freethinking can only desecrate, despoil and ruin. It can
create nothing, because it has no vision of the Good, and it will
always be judged as wanting on account of this.

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/04/freethinking_ruins_all_things.html


Freethinking Ruins All Things

His "mildest" criticism that religion is man-made is supposed to be the
stab to the heart, the "most devastating" thing one can say about
religion. If this is the case, the religious people of the world can rest
easy and return to quarreling with one another

Freethinking Ruins All Things

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/04/freethinking_ruins_all_things.html


Freethinking Ruins All Things

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/04/freethinking_ruins_all_...


...when Hitchens says "'man-made," he means that he thinks
religion is purely and completely the product of the human mind, an
invention, a fraud. He thinks he has the religious fellow cornered by
saying this, as if religious people are unaware that the history of
the religions of the world is also the history of man. The
inextricability of religious practice from human experience over the
millennia is supposed to be proof that there is nothing true in any of
it, as if it were not the remedy for that which ails man or as if it
did not provide something that man requires by nature. But, of course,
religion is man-made. Men build the temples, write the prayers,
organise the rites and offer the oblations and sacrifices. That does
not mean that there is no divinely inspired and true religion.

From this perspective, agency is a sort of "Innate Releasing

It
means that it is not always immediately self-evident and clear which
is the true religion, and it means that those who have opted for the
sterile, sad path of "freethinking," which is simply to inhabit a
particularly wearisome set of prejudices, have simply lost patience in
trying to discern the truth of the matter. They do not want free
inquiry--they want easy inquiry, an inquiry that never leaves one in
aporia, but always promises explanation and resolution. The typical
freethinker believes that he is at home with uncertainty, and that it
is the religious man who is in dire need of certainty, but the
opposite is quite obviously true: the freethinker cannot really stand
to have loose ends, puzzles or paradoxes. If this, then that is
impossible, the freethinker says. The religious man not only assumes
that paradox will occur, but he takes the paucity of reason to explain
paradox as an indirect confirmation that there are realities that not
even reason, as estimable and valuable as it is, can penetrate or
comprehend. Freethinking can only desecrate, despoil and ruin. It can
create nothing, because it has no vision of the Good, and it will
always be judged as wanting on account of this.

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/04/freethinking_ruins_all_...

Freethinking Ruins All Things

Freethinking Ruins All Things

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/04/freethinking_ruins_all_things.html


Freethinking Ruins All Things


Slate has started publishing excerpts from Christopher Hitchens' new
book (so very cleverly titled God Is Not Great), the first of which is
here. The argument he advances is certainly not new, nor does Hitchens
say that it is. He takes some satisfaction that his objections have
been recycled time and again. His "mildest" criticism that religion is
man-made is supposed to be the stab to the heart, the "most
devastating" thing one can say about religion. If this is the case,
the religious people of the world can rest easy and return to
quarreling with one another, leaving the pestiferous atheist to abuse
someone else's patience with his tedious declarations of
enlightenment.

At the heart of every freisinning appeal is a lie. They want free
inquiry, Hitchens says, but there is no such thing. Every inquiry must
at least have a purpose or a reason. Inquiry is never really free--it
always has a cost, it always has limits and definitions and it always
entails assumptions. To assume one thing is to exclude another; the
freedom of choice, strictly speaking, is likewise not really free,
because it presupposes the denial of myriad choices, the acceptance of
the costs of the paths not taken, the constant constraints and
finitude that limit the range of choice. The atheists and freethinkers
say they want openmindedness, but their minds are plainly shut off to
the fountains of wisdom of thousands of years because the wisdom
contained in scriptures and hymns--from which virtually all great
Western art and literature derive and to which all of it pays often
unwitting tribute--is expressed in an idiom and attributed to a source
that they reject out of hand because they cannot confirm in their
wretched narrowness of spirit that the Author of life has spoken to
men on the doubtful basis that He has never spoken to them (though it
seems they would not listen to Him if He did).

Freethinkers supposedly want "the pursuit of ideas for their own
sake," but no one pursues ideas simply for their own sake, but in
order to understand, to act or to believe, or to have some combination
of these. Men pursue ideas so that they may understand the world, and
they seek to understand the world to have wisdom. Men desire wisdom in
order to live well, and part of living well is to pursue and know the
Good, and the Good is that which fulfills human nature and causes it
to flourish. The desire to know is a natural desire, one implanted in
us as part of our created being; we yearn to know and to enter into
the unknown because we yearn for unity with the One Who desires that
all things be united in Him. If no religion had ever caused men to
live virtuously and flourish, religion would have disappeared ages
ago. If no religion had produced saints and cultivated the finest
aspects of human nature, very few would adhere themselves to it and
even then it would only be the mad and obsessive. There is nothing
interesting in rehearsing the catalogue of crimes that religious
adherents have committed against each other, since men have always
been slaughtering and oppressing one another and they have tended to
do more of it when they are less in thrall to their religious
tradition than when they are strictly obedient to it. What is
remarkable is how much at least some religions have contributed to the
civilisation and edification of men, which would hardly seem probable
if they were not much more than elaborate exercises in self-deception
and nonsense.

I know that when Hitchens says "'man-made," he means that he thinks
religion is purely and completely the product of the human mind, an
invention, a fraud. He thinks he has the religious fellow cornered by
saying this, as if religious people are unaware that the history of
the religions of the world is also the history of man. The
inextricability of religious practice from human experience over the
millennia is supposed to be proof that there is nothing true in any of
it, as if it were not the remedy for that which ails man or as if it
did not provide something that man requires by nature. But, of course,
religion is man-made. Men build the temples, write the prayers,
organise the rites and offer the oblations and sacrifices. That does
not mean that there is no divinely inspired and true religion. It
means that it is not always immediately self-evident and clear which
is the true religion, and it means that those who have opted for the
sterile, sad path of "freethinking," which is simply to inhabit a
particularly wearisome set of prejudices, have simply lost patience in
trying to discern the truth of the matter. They do not want free
inquiry--they want easy inquiry, an inquiry that never leaves one in
aporia, but always promises explanation and resolution. The typical
freethinker believes that he is at home with uncertainty, and that it
is the religious man who is in dire need of certainty, but the
opposite is quite obviously true: the freethinker cannot really stand
to have loose ends, puzzles or paradoxes. If this, then that is
impossible, the freethinker says. The religious man not only assumes
that paradox will occur, but he takes the paucity of reason to explain
paradox as an indirect confirmation that there are realities that not
even reason, as estimable and valuable as it is, can penetrate or
comprehend. Freethinking can only desecrate, despoil and ruin. It can
create nothing, because it has no vision of the Good, and it will
always be judged as wanting on account of this.