Third Review for The Threat to Reason

Socialist Review has just published an extremely interesting and broadly positive review of The Threat to Reason:

Although different in emphasis, books like Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, Sam Hall's Letter to a Christian Nation, and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great are all loitering with intent on the same street corner, waiting to club passing believers insensible with the baseball bat of reason. It seems that two important Enlightenment virtues these authors have not absorbed are those of tolerance and respect for the views of others.

But, whatever other disagreements we may have with these authors, surely they are right to attack the obscurantism and irrationality of religious belief? In a commendably short and well argued book, Dan Hind argues that they are not. In fact, as Hind convincingly shows, they are either, at best, staging an unconscious diversion from the real threats to the Enlightenment tradition or, at worst, providing ideological cover for imperial politics. It is no accident that under the cover of attacks on religion in general the greatest bile is invariably reserved for Islam.

The reviewer, Neil Davidson, doesn't go along with everything I have to say, as you might expect. But I can understand his reservations; I am generally quiet about class relations in the book, and I don't advocate a straightforwardly Marxist position when I try to offer an revised idea of what it would to be enlightened. You can read the full review here.

The Pitfalls of Eloquence

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

This is one of those bold assertions for which Hitchens is famous. It is billed by him as an ‘elementary rule of logic’, but if he seriously believes it, he is committed to a very exotic philosophy. For there is a class of assertions for which we cannot provide evidence, but which would be reluctant to dismiss lightly. Moral statements (‘It is wrong to murder’, ‘You should tell the truth’, you know the kind of thing) cannot be supported by anything like evidence. Of course you might tell a story about how we have evolved to be moral, or you could point out the prudential advantages of a moral life. But this very far from being evidence that you must be moral now.

If moral statements are in some sense true and at the same time cannot rely on evidence, we have to be very meticulous as to how exactly they differ from religious claims. Now there might be a case for treating religious and moral claims differently; but it is a case that must be made. Assertions that lack evidence cannot be dismissed by fiat, by the power of a well turned aphorism.

Another aphorist once said that 'the good is outside the space of facts'. This is a claim that lacks factual corroboration (how could it not), but it is very beautiful, and perhaps even true.