Contempt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The leading divines of the church gave sanction to this theory. St. Augustin, who had himself been a heretic for nine years, was at first in favor of toleration.45 But during the Donatist controversy, he came to the conclusion that the correction and coërcion of heretics and schismatics was in some cases necessary and wholesome. His tract on the Correction of the Donatists was written about 417, to show that the schismatical and fanatical Donatists should be subjected to the punishment of the imperial laws. He admits that it is better that men should be led to worship God by teaching than be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but he reasons that more men are corrected by fear. He derives the proof from the Old Testament. The only passages from the New Testament which he is able to quote, would teach a compulsory salvation rather than punishment, but are really not to the point. He refers to Paul’s conversion as a case of compulsion by Christ himself, and misapplies the word of our Lord in the parable of the Supper: "Constrain them to come in."46 Yet he professed, on the other hand, the correct principle that "no man can believe against his will."47 And he expressly discouraged the infliction of the death-penalty on heretics.48 Thomas Aquinas, next to Augustin, the highest authority among the canonized doctors of the Latin church, went a step further. He proved, to the satisfaction of the Middle Ages, that the rites of idolaters, Jews, and infidels ought not to be tolerated,49 and that heretics or corruptors of the Christian faith, being worse criminals than debasers of money, ought (after due admonition) not only to be excommunicated by the church, but also be put to death by the state.50 He does not quote a Bible passage in favor of the death-penalty of heretics; on the contrary he mentions three passages which favor toleration of heretics, 2 Tim. 2:24; 1 Cor. 11:19; Matt. 13:29, 30, and then tries to deprive them of their force by his argument drawn from the guilt of heresy. The persecution of heretics reached its height in the papal crusades against the Albigenses under Innocent III., one of the best of popes; in the dark deeds of the Spanish Inquisition; and in the unspeakable atrocities of the Duke of Alva against the Protestants in the Netherlands during his short reign (1567–1573).51 The horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24, 1572) was sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., who celebrated it by public thanksgivings, and with a medal bearing his image, an avenging angel and the inscription, Ugonottorum strages.52 The infamous dragonnades of Louis XIV. were a continuation of the same politico-ecclesiastical policy on a larger scale, aiming at the complete destruction of Protestantism in France, in violation of the solemn edict of his grandfather (1598, revoked 1685), and met the full approval of the Roman clergy, including Bishop Bossuet, the advocate of Gallican liberties.53

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Saladin was watching the besiegers and protecting the garrison. The horrors of the siege made it one of the memorable sieges of the Middle Ages.418 It was carried on from the sea as well as on the land. Greek fire was used with great effect by the Turks.419 The struggle was participated in by women as well as the men. Some Crusaders apostatized to get the means for prolonging life.420 With the aid of the huge machine Check Greek, and other engines constructed by Richard in Sicily, and by Philip, the city was made to surrender, July, 1191. By the terms of the capitulation the city’s stores, two hundred thousand pieces of gold, fifteen hundred prisoners, and the true cross were to pass into the hands of the Crusaders. The advance upon Jerusalem was delayed by rivalries between the armies and their leaders. Richard’s prowess, large means, and personal popularity threw Philip into the shade, and he was soon on his way back to France, leaving the duke of Burgundy as leader of the French. The French and Germans also quarrelled.421 A fruitful source of friction was the quarrel between Guy of Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat over the crown of Jerusalem, until the matter was finally settled by Conrad’s murder and the recognition of Guy as king of Cyprus, and Henry of Champagne, the nephew of both Richard and Philip Augustus, as king of Jerusalem. A dark blot rests upon Richard’s memory for the murder in cold blood of twenty-seven hundred prisoners in the full sight of Saladin’s troops and as a punishment for the non-payment of the ransom money. The massacre, a few days before, of Christian captives, if it really occurred, in part explains but cannot condone the crime.422 Jaffa and Ascalon became the next points of the Crusaders’ attack, the operations being drawn out to a wearisome length. Richard’s feats of physical strength and martial skill are vouched for by eye-witnesses, who speak of him as cutting swathes through the enemy with his sword and mowing them down, "as the reapers mow down the corn with their sickles." So mighty was his strength that, when a Turkish admiral rode at him in full charge, Richard severed his neck and one shoulder by a single blow. But the king’s dauntless though coarse courage was not joined to the gifts of a leader fit for such a campaign.423 His savage war shout, "God and the Holy Sepulchre aid us," failed to unite the troops cloven by jealousies and to establish military discipline. The camps were a scene of confusion.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  (his answer: what physics says it is), or ‘What is the purpose of the universe?’ (his answer: there is none). Rosenberg graciously concedes that ‘knowing the truth makes it hard not to sound patronizing of the benighted souls still under religion’s spell.’ But if you have discovered what you believe to be ‘irrefutably correct answers’, I suppose it’s irritating when others suggest you may have got things wrong. In the light of his unassailable certainties about life, Rosenberg declares that it is pointless to try and find ‘a good reason to go on living, because there isn’t any.’ Happily, Rosenberg has a therapeutic solution for those who might be troubled by the absence of morality or meaning from their worlds: if this ‘makes it impossible to get out of bed in the morning,’ you should try Prozac (other neuro-pharmacological fixes are, of course, available). Rosenberg presents himself as a lofty, rational observer of other people’s madness. Yet I am unpersuaded by his line of argument. Let me invite you to join me in a mental experiment that might be helpful in exploring this question. During the COVID lockdown of 2020–21, I regularly used a thermometer to determine my temperature. A raised temperature would not necessarily mean that I had COVID, but it was certainly an indication that I needed to check things out. Suppose I were to argue like this. My thermometer proved to be a reliable tool for checking my temperature. Since it worked so well in that role, why not use it for everything? Like working out what is right or wrong? Or whether I have free will? Or determining the meaning of life? Now this will strike most of my readers as a ridiculous argument. I suspect (and hope) many will respond to my suggestion like this: a thermometer has been designed to check temperatures! It doesn’t do anything else! It’s not meant to be used for ethical or existential issues! But that’s my point. Intellectual disciplines devise their own research methods to engage specific aspects of reality. A research method that works for one domain will be useless or misleading if used in another. Rosenberg is simply universalising a tool that was designed with other specific (and limited) purposes in mind. Mary Midgley makes this point in a highly critical assessment of those who, like Rosenberg, demand that every intellectual domain should be subordinated to the methods of physicists. ‘No one pattern of thought – not even in physics – is so “fundamental” that all others will eventually be reduced to it. Instead, for most important questions in human life, a number of different conceptual tool-boxes always have to be used together.’ 40 But I have a second problem with Rosenberg’s approach, which he himself recognises: his argument for the exclusive authority of science is viciously circular, presupposing (indeed, relying upon) its conclusions.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Accordingly, eunuchs featured in Byzantine society not merely as generals or court officials, but increasingly as time went on also as senior Churchmen, despite official ecclesiastical bans on castrated men taking clerical office dating back to the landmark Council of Nicaea in 325. Nicaea had actually left convenient legal loopholes when it ordered all eunuch clergy to be deposed. Not only did it exempt those who had been castrated against their will, but also eunuchs who had undergone the operation for medical reasons (not the last time that this would be a provision in ecclesiastical legislation on various moral issues). Because of this, eunuchs regularly appeared among the Church hierarchy, right up to the Patriarchate of Constantinople: there were five eunuch patriarchs between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, and maybe others. Certain monasteries in the eastern Mediterranean from Greece to Judaea were established exclusively for eunuch monks, but eunuchs were also commonly to be found in ‘mixed’ communities of male monks. It therefore made sense for families, perhaps in some poverty-stricken village in the Balkans, to arrange castration for a promising son, which would set him up for high imperial or ecclesiastical office as much as did a decent education. [50] Since eunuchs often wielded significant political power, it is not surprising that helpful theologians might draw attention to their resemblance to genderless angels. Moreover, Jesus had bequeathed posterity a comment distinguishing three categories of eunuchs that was certainly not negative about them, albeit a little puzzling (Matt. 19.12; above, Chapter 4). One might even regard a decision for castration as a lesser imitation of an emperor’s liturgical inauguration for public service; by comparison, the eunuch’s bearded colleagues among Court attendants lacked any such formal ceremony anticipating their future career. The doyenne of Byzantine scholars Judith Herrin directs our gaze to the famous mosaics flanking the altar in San Vitale, Justinian I’s great church in Ravenna, where, in defiance of normal Byzantine iconographical convention, secular courtiers accompany the imperial couple in procession to the altar. Contrasting with Justinian’s largely bearded entourage, the Empress Theodora is accompanied to the altar (a space officially forbidden to women) by two beardless attendants who assist in making her gift of a chalice (see Plate 12). Probably we are viewing eunuchs at the very heart of imperial liturgy, helping to mediate between earth and heaven alongside the angelic host. [51] The very success of this association of eunuchs with genderless angels rendered the analogy problematic for late imperial ascetics, despite its continuing place in the thought of ascetic theologians like Maximos the Confessor. Not everyone in Byzantium bought into the angelic image of eunuchs, and there were plenty of scandalous stories – either genuine or efforts to discredit them – not to mention some pointed and disapproving theological reflections from major authorities such as the fourth-century writer Basil, Bishop of Ancyra: ‘the removal of parts denounces the adultery of the one who mutilates himself’, he commented acerbically.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Any form of ideological exclusivism inevitably leads to social and intellectual tensions, in that it divides the world into in-groups and out-groups – ‘friends and enemies’, ‘good and evil’, ‘us and them’, ‘human and subhuman’, or ‘enlightened and irrational’.32 All these value-laden categorisations provide an impetus to demonise and dehumanise the ‘other’ which can lead to discrimination, hostility and violence. The Nazi ideological recategorisation of certain human communities as Untermenschen (sub-humans) allowed their elimination to be framed as socially therapeutic and morally unproblematic. Violence against women is widespread, with extensive research suggesting that men’s controlling attitudes and behaviour towards women often rest on underlying traditional gender norms – a set of beliefs about the place and roles of men and women in society, such as ideologies of hegemonic masculinity which are internalised as normative by both men and women. This framing ideology leads women to blame themselves for being the victims of violence by men, so that they are less likely to disclose it or seek legal support.33 Overcoming such traditional beliefs and ideologies is not easy, not least on account of the social pressures to conform to dominant local accounts of human identity. It is, however, necessary to challenge certain understandings of being human and the illusions that are employed to sustain them. It is helpful to remember that an ideology is a human construction, not some eternal truth characterised by a mathematical or logical certainty which demands our assent. And what of religion? Surely religion is implicated in the violent history of human culture? Of course it is. But things are more complicated than its critics suggest – not least because religion is not a catch-all. For a start, some secularist critiques of religion are highly selective, presenting religions as a monolithically violent and oppressive reality, and failing to respect its complexity and depth, which makes such generalisations questionable. Michael Shermer, President of the Skeptics Society, made the significant point that while religions were implicated in some human tragedies, such as holy wars, there is clearly a significant positive side to religion that has to be acknowledged: However, for every one of these grand tragedies there are ten thousand acts of personal kindness and social good that go unreported… Religion, like all social institutions of such historical depth and cultural impact, cannot be reduced to an unambiguous good or evil.34

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  37 camels” (23:24). They are portrayed as godless and heartless, blind leaders who know the right thing to do but don’t raise a ¿ nger to do it. Because of this harsh opposition to the Jewish leaders, this Gospel is sometimes read as being anti-Jewish, but that may be taking the matter too far. The closest thing to any real opposition to Jews per se comes in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. In this account, Pilate declares Jesus innocent and washes his hands of his blood, while the Jewish crowds assume responsibility for Jesus’ death, crying out “his blood be upon us and our children” (27:25). Even here, though, the real culprits are portrayed as the Jewish leaders who have stirred up the crowds. In conclusion, these are the main points we’ve seen in our consideration of Matthew’s distinctive portrayal of Jesus. As in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus in Matthew is portrayed as the Son of God who must die for the sins of the world. But here the stress is much more on the Jewish aspects of who he was. For Matthew, Jesus was the Jewish messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in ful¿ llment of the Jewish Law. Jesus—as messiah—gave the true interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures to his Jewish followers, who were then expected to ful¿ ll the Jewish Law, even better than the scribes and Pharisees. Ŷ The Gospel of Matthew. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, chap. 8. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, chap. 7. Brown, Birth of the Messiah. Carter, What Are They Saying About the Sermon on the Mount? Senior, What Are They Saying About Matthew? Essential Reading Supplemental Reading 38 Lecture 6: Matthew—Jesus the Jewish Messiah 1. Many people today consider Judaism and Christianity to be two completely distinct religions. How would Matthew react to this view? 2. If Matthew were so insistent that Christians needed to follow the Jewish Law, does that mean Christians today should refuse to work on the Sabbath (Saturday) and should keep kosher? 3. Matthew’s thorough opposition to the Jewish establishment has been used over the centuries as justi¿ cation for acts of anti-Semitism. In what sense should Matthew himself be held responsible for such acts of hatred? Is there some sense in which he himself should be seen as anti- Semitic (even though he does stress Jesus’ own Jewish-ness)? Questions to Consider

• From The New Testament (Great Courses) (1997)

  114 Lecture 21: The Book of Hebrews and the Rise of Christian Anti-Semitism in the trend among Christians to discount, and eventually to attack, Judaism. The irony, of course, is that Christianity started out as Jewish in the teachings of the Jewish prophet, Jesus. After his death, though, Christians appeared to be far less concerned with the religion he espoused than with the religion founded on his death and resurrection. Most Jews, of course, rejected this new religion right from the earliest days of Christianity. For many Jews, it seemed ludicrous to call Jesus the messiah, because he was not a ¿ gure of power that had overcome the enemies of the people of Israel. He was a cruci ¿ ed criminal. To insist that God had “changed the rules,” by invalidating the Law that he himself had given his people, or that he had rescinded an “eternal” covenant that he had made, was tantamount to calling God a turncoat and a liar. Christians insisted that their religion was “true Judaism” and, because the only way to God was through the death of Jesus, anyone who retained the old Judaism was necessarily damned by the God they claimed to worship. Animosities naturally arose and were exacerbated as Christianity became a primarily Gentile religion—yet one that claimed to represent Judaism as it ought to be. Jews naturally found this offensive—non-Jews who did not even attempt to keep the Jewish Law or join the Jewish people were claiming to be the true people of the God of the Jews, insisting that the Jews themselves had been rejected by their own God. Christians, to validate their beliefs, looked to Scriptures to ¿ nd examples of when and where God expressed his displeasure with the Jewish people. There were many examples in the Prophets that were adduced for this purpose. We can see the animosities in later sermons from the early Christians, including one particularly vitriolic homily delivered by a 2 nd-century Christian bishop named Melito from the city of Sardis in Asia Minor. In Melito’s sermon, preached on an Easter with the Exodus story of the Passover as the background, Israel is maligned and attacked for the way it treated Jesus (as if all Israel were to blame), killing their own Passover lamb. Even Christianity started out as Jewish in the teachings of the Jewish prophet, Jesus.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  One difficulty concerns the increasingly polarised nature of American political discourse since the 1970s. An ideological polarisation, resulting from divergent viewpoints, is increasingly being supplemented with an affective polarisation, expressing distaste and dislike for the people holding these views. 44 It is not simply that American culture has become more polarised; the nature of that polarisation has become more complex, involving often trenchant views about the morality, intelligence and integrity of those who hold alternative viewpoints. It remains unclear whether Rawls’ views regarding finding agreement about fair outcomes can be sustained when there is such personal distrust within and across the political spectrum. Beyond the difference that believing makes to individuals, we have begun to contemplate how these shape public life and debate. In the next chapter, we shall focus on the question of the relation of beliefs and communities, focusing particularly on how ‘communities of belief’ come into being, function, and are prone to losing their way. Chapter 3 The Case of Religious Belief It is fatally easy to believe that something that has been named is something that is understood . Everyone thinks they know what ‘religion’ is. Perhaps this is why it remains such a viable category in public discourse and everyday life. But cultural familiarity is not the same as intellectual stability. We are all familiar with the term ‘love’, but people profess and embody this notion in vastly different ways from one culture to another, across age groups and even within the same home. What is Religion? Religion, we are often told, is a universal human phenomenon. This may be true, but the popular conceptualisation of ‘religion’ is decidedly western, shaped by the social and intellectual history of modern western Europe and North America. Allegedly ‘global’ definitions of religion are generally based on the views of present-day WEIRD (western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic) populations, overlooking the views of as much as eighty-eight per cent of humanity today, and reflecting a disturbing disregard for how the concept was understood in the past. So, what do we study when we study religion? After all, a psychologist of religion or a sociologist of religion needs to know what they are meant to be investigating. Yet to speak of ‘religion’ is to enter a definitional cloud of unknowing, a miasma of personal opinions, cultural prejudices and questionable inherited intellectual habits which shroud the landscape like a dense fog. For example, while Judaism can be described as a ‘religion’, and Jews understood as adherents of this religion, there is growing scholarly evidence that Jews are better understood as a ‘people group’ with ancestral practices and beliefs that have become normative over time. 1 Take Ancient Rome.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Perhaps more worryingly, belief is toxic. If you believe something that is unevidenced, you will end up believing anything that is unevidenced, falling victim to a kind of ‘blind faith’ which is socially and politically dangerous. Maybe it is faintly amusing that some less evolved human beings believe in a sky fairy. But what if this delusion leads them to fly airplanes into buildings? Surely something needs to be done to eliminate such backward and destructive ways of thinking? Richard Dawkins expressed the deep cultural anxieties of many about belief and faith which crystallised around the turn of the millennium: ‘I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.’ Inevitably, the tone of the discussion of belief shifted as a result of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Many political commentators saw this as the outcome of American foreign policy and military interventionism in the Middle East, which generated a demand for retribution in this region. One analysis suggests that western sanctions against Iraq in the period between the two Gulf Wars caused more deaths than ‘all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.’1 Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, however, reframed this event as a demonstration of the dangers of religion. Religion was denounced as the ‘opium of the people’, impairing proper mental functioning and thus inducing extremism and violence. They say that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come; for many, these were the prophets of a new worldview that had been waiting for its moment in the sun. New Atheism encouraged a discriminatory rhetoric which turned a longstanding academic discussion on the reasonableness of religious belief into a political lightning rod in which conventions of thoughtful debate and personal civility were set to one side. Bumper slogans appeared, unconstrained by any consideration of truth or morality. ‘I think, therefore I am an atheist.’ Or, ‘God doesn’t kill People. People who believe in God kill People.’ The target of these denunciations was no longer simply religious ideas, but religious people. These, it was argued, are deluded and dangerous and therefore should be socially marginalised, excluded from positions of influence. Perhaps it was inevitable that religion, as the writer Marilynne Robinson observed, has ‘dropped out of the cultural conversation’. It seems that religion has been shamed into the margins of our culture, embarrassed out of the public square. Not everyone greeted this development with equanimity. Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain to Harvard University, was one of many who protested against shaming people for their faith. While atheism is the lack of belief in any god, anti-theism means actively seeking out the worst aspects of faith in God and portraying them as representative of all religion. Anti-theism seeks to shame and embarrass people away from religion, browbeating them about the stupidity of belief in a bellicose god.2

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Individual thinkers or communities of beliefs have often been deliberately excluded or treated as inferior or insignificant in mainstream discourse – an act of discrimination and repression that is increasingly discussed in terms of ‘epistemic injustice.’27 This practice continues to this day, both in the forms of denigrating certain epistemic groups, or privileging others. Certain groups of people have historically been discounted or marginalised as the bearers or interpreters of truth – particularly women and people of colour. Many religious traditions, for example, clearly treat women as having lesser status as witnesses to truth, teachers, or exemplars.28 A growing awareness of the historical use of the Bible to perpetuate and justify racism and abusive male dominance has led to a closer reading of this text to understand how these interpretations arose in the first place, and might be challenged in the second. Yet while religious communities are certainly guilty of some forms of discrimination, they are also discriminated against, particularly in the epistemic domain – think, for example, of the imperious dismissal of religious believers as evil, stupid or mentally ill by some rationalist writers. Yet this epistemic arrogance is not specifically linked with a criticism of religion. It is now widely encountered within western culture, with the potential to increase its fragmentation and polarisation. For example, the growth of online ‘echo chambers’ providing selectively curated information that is consistent with an in-group’s ideology or identity is not merely heightening cultural tensions; it is making it increasingly difficult to mediate between factions and tribes, who see the perpetuation of their favoured stereotypes as simply articulating ‘their truth’. As noted earlier, this problem is becoming especially significant within the political domain, as an increasingly toxic culture emerges, particularly in the United States. Fewer politicians are willing to socialise across party lines, or even partner with opponents in a variety of other activities. Ideological distance, based on what people believe, is now being supplemented by personal antagonism, based on how people feel about members of other communities. If we are to rebuild social cohesion and mitigate the negative social impact of ‘affective polarisation’ in western culture,29 there is a clear need for public intellectuals to become diplomats, explaining one specific community’s idea without condemning or ridiculing others. In view of the importance of this issue, we shall reflect more on the role of ‘public intellectuals’ in mediating between communities of belief.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Innocent was now free to convoke again the council which Frederick’s forcible measures had prevented from assembling in Rome. It is known as the First Council of Lyons, or the Thirteenth Oecumenical Council, and met in Lyons, 1245. The measures the papal letter mentioned as calling for action were the provision of relief for the Holy Land and of resistance to the Mongols whose ravages had extended to Hungary, and the settlement of matters in dispute between the Apostolic see and the emperor. One hundred and forty prelates were present. With the exception of a few representatives from England and one or two bishops from Germany, the attendance was confined to ecclesiastics from Southern Europe.256 Baldwin, emperor of Constantinople, was there to plead his dismal cause. Frederick was represented by his able counsellor, Thaddeus of Suessa. Thaddeus promised for his master to restore Greece to the Roman communion and proceed to the Holy Land in person. Innocent rejected the promises as intended to deceive and to break up the council. The axe, he said, was laid at the root, and the stroke was not to be delayed. When Thaddeus offered the kings of England and France as sureties that the emperor would keep his promise, the pope sagaciously replied that in that case he would be in danger of having three princes to antagonize. Innocent was plainly master of the situation. The council was in sympathy with him. Many of its members had a grudge against Frederick for having been subjected to the outrage of capture and imprisonment by him.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Mary Midgley makes this point in a highly critical assessment of those who, like Rosenberg, demand that every intellectual domain should be subordinated to the methods of physicists. ‘No one pattern of thought – not even in physics – is so “fundamental” that all others will eventually be reduced to it. Instead, for most important questions in human life, a number of different conceptual tool-boxes always have to be used together.’40 But I have a second problem with Rosenberg’s approach, which he himself recognises: his argument for the exclusive authority of science is viciously circular, presupposing (indeed, relying upon) its conclusions. Imagine someone who makes the following assertion: ‘science is the only reliable arbitrator of reliable knowledge, offering “irrefutably correct answers” to any meaningful questions.’ Here’s my point: if science is the only secure foundation and reliable arbitrator of human knowledge, it necessarily follows that we must use science to reliably evaluate every belief or proposal – including the belief that ‘science is the only reliable arbitrator of reliable knowledge’. What experiment might show that science is the sole source of reliable knowledge? How could Rosenberg’s claim be validated from outside a scientific perspective? Rosenberg’s whole process of validation is ultimately self-referential and self-validating, allowing us to affirm the internal consistency but not the truth of this belief – and it is a belief, in that it cannot be proved to be true. Furthermore, how can we know that there is no more to reality than the laws of nature that science discovers? Declaring that science is the ‘ultimate standard and arbiter of all interesting questions’ is making a second-order philosophical claim about science, which cannot be verified empirically. As the philosopher Edward Feser points out, Rosenberg is trapped in a circular argument. To break out of this circle, he suggests, ‘requires “getting outside” science altogether’ and verifying from an ‘extra-scientific vantage point’ that science alone offers a reliable picture of reality. Yet making this entirely reasonable intellectual move simply pulls the rug out from Rosenberg’s argument. ‘The very existence of that extra-scientific vantage point would falsify the claim that science alone gives us a rational means of investigating objective reality.’41 Over the years, I have come to the view that there is a spectrum of human knowledge, which rests on the application of a range of different ‘conceptual tool-boxes’ (Midgley), each developed and adapted with specific research questions in mind. Some examples may help illustrate the rich diversity of questions that people consider significant, and which they hope may be answered. What is the universe expanding into? Why can’t I be the good person that I know I ought to be?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  168) denies the identity of the Logos with Christ, and resolves the Logos into a divine principle, instead of a person. "Der Logos ist nicht die Person Christi ... sondern er ist das gottheitliche Princip dieser menschlichen Persönlichkeit." He assumes a gradual unfolding of the Logos principle in the human person of Christ. But the personality of the Logos is taught in John 1:1–3, and ejgevneto denotes a completed act. We must remember, however, that personality in the trinity and personality of the Logos are different from personality of man. Human speech is inadequate to express the distinction. § 73. Heretical Perversions of the Apostolic Teaching. (Comp. my Hist. of the Ap. Ch., pp. 649–674.) The three types of doctrine which we have briefly unfolded, exhibit Christianity in the whole fulness of its life; and they form the theme for the variations of the succeeding ages of the church. Christ is the key-note, harmonizing all the discords and resolving all the mysteries of the history of his kingdom. But this heavenly body of apostolic truth is confronted with the ghost of heresy; as were the divine miracles of Moses with the satanic juggleries of the Egyptians, and as Christ was with demoniacal possessions. The more mightily the spirit of truth rises, the more active becomes the spirit of falsehood. "Where God builds a church the devil builds, a chapel close by." But in the hands of Providence all errors must redound to the unfolding and the final victory of the truth. They stimulate inquiry and compel defence. Satan himself is that "power which constantly wills the bad, and works the good." Heresies in a disordered world are relatively necessary and negatively justifiable; though the teachers of them are, of course, not the less guilty. "It must needs be, that scandals come; but woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh."862 The heresies of the apostolic age are, respectively, the caricatures of the several types of the true doctrine. Accordingly we distinguish three fundamental forms of heresy, which reappear, with various modifications, in almost every subsequent period. In this respect, as in others, the apostolic period stands as the type of the whole future; and the exhortations and warnings of the New Testament against false doctrine have force for every age. 1. The Judaizing tendency is the heretical counterpart of Jewish Christianity. It so insists on the unity of Christianity with Judaism, as to sink the former to the level of the latter, and to make the gospel no more than an improvement or a perfected law. It regards Christ as a mere prophet, a second Moses; and denies, or at least wholly overlooks, his divine nature and his priestly and kingly offices. The Judaizers were Jews in fact, and Christians only in appearance and in name. They held circumcision and the whole moral and ceremonial law of Moses to be still binding, and the observance of them necessary to salvation.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  inadvertently revived a form of Christian sub-Trinitarian theology chased out of the mainstream Christian Churches in the second and third centuries CE. Termed ‘modalist Monarchianism’ in the forbidding jargon of Church historians, ‘Oneness’ or ‘Jesus-Only’ Pentecostal belief now infuses the joyful faith of around a quarter of Pentecostalism’s vast constituency worldwide. [4] It is hardly surprising that in the early years of Pentecostalism, Evangelicals generally detested Pentecostals as much as they had once despised Quakers. After all, the essence of Evangelicalism is an affirmation of the clarity and comprehensibility of the Word of God in Scripture, rather than the wordless sighs of the Spirit of God (once praised in passing by Paul of Tarsus himself, Rom. 8.26). Cerebral Fundamentalism like this is a particularly awkward fit for the Pentecostal outlook. An opposite problem was the closeness of much Pentecostal belief to some of the theological innovations made by nineteenth- century Evangelical Protestantism – like quarrelsome siblings, they could bicker over the finer points of for instance ‘Spirit Baptism’ or ‘Dispensationalism’ – terms that would generally provoke blank looks in other parts of the Christian family. Moreover, the extrovert style of Pentecostal revivalism was irritatingly familiar to Evangelicals, while the Pentecostal penchant for giving women dramatic leadership roles was embarrassingly reminiscent of female freedoms that most wings of Evangelicalism spent the nineteenth century closing down (above, Chapter 15). [5] Nevertheless, the widening global success of Pentecostalism could not fail to impress Evangelicals. One important commonality was their shared growing suspicion of liberal Protestantism, particularly when it centred itself on a ‘Social Gospel’ of justice and political action that seemed to them a dangerous distraction to the task of evangelism. A crucial moment came in 1943 when a major component of the Pentecostal Movement in the USA, the Assemblies of God, agreed to join the National Association of Evangelicals. [6] It was a time when American Evangelicalism seemed especially vulnerable and in need of allies. In the inter-war period, it had suffered dual blows on the national scene, first in widespread ridicule after a set-piece confrontation over the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the school curricula in Tennessee and Oklahoma, and then in the abject failure of its attempt to impose compliance with Prohibition on the nation’s drinkers. The favourite cause of ‘first-wave feminism’ met its match in the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 by the Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a Congress dominated by (overwhelmingly male) Democrats. The Pentecostal–Evangelical pact grew in strength after 1943. It meant that theological education for both parties fell into conservative patterns set by the Evangelicals, who were generally better financed. Styles of worship evolved in similar ways. The burgeoning Christianity of Africa found Pentecostalism’s celebratory and spontaneous forms of worship more congenial than older European liturgies whether Protestant or Catholic; so did the emerging indigenous Christianities of Asia from India to Korea. Celebration of God’s love was often the only celebration that desperately poor people could count on.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  And you should not expect him or her to be. "You should expect it to be good," says Famous Chef. That's the bottom line. BOTTOMING OUT There is no one less sympathetic to the trials, tribulations, and humiliations of the addict than an ex-junkie. No emergency room triage is more immediate and unforgiving than the way an ex-junkie sizes up a still-in-the grip former colleague. I hear that familiar, whiny tone of voice, I see the pinned, cartoon eyes of the smack user, or the jumpy, twitchy, molar-grinding, gibberish- spewing face of the coke-fiend, and I see a dead man. I'm not listening anymore. If I pay attention at all, it's to make sure they're not rifling through my coat. Cold? Yes. But then, junkies are used to stone-cold logic. Life, for someone whose body, brain, nerves, and cell tissue require (rather than desire) their drug of choice in order to get out of bed in the morning, is actually a very simple matter. You have one job: To get drugs. There's only one thing you have to do each day: Get drugs. One's priorities are always straight. Simply put: Nothing else matters. Those of us who've been addicted to heroin and/or cocaine (and I've been addicted to both) understand that better than anybody. You know, without question, that your best friend in the world will, given the opportunity, steal your drugs or your money or snitch you off to the cops. You know, without question, exactly how low you would be willing to go to get what you need. Chances are, you've been there already. More than once. Stories about drugs and rehabilitation are boring, particularly when it's some Hollywood actor, grinning out from the cover of People magazine, yammering about Clean and Sober and their new project. We've heard it all before. Some people live. Others die. Who survives and who doesn't seems most often to have been determined long before the subject enters treatment—when the junkie in question looks in the mirror one morning and decides that he really, truly wants to live. If there's any question in your mind, before you even walk through the doors of the methadone clinic or rehab facility, about how badly you want to turn things around, and what you're willing to do to accomplish that, then lose my number. The memory of the bitter taste of heroin in the back of my throat, the smell of burning candles, the taste of paint chips mistaken for a pebble of dropped crack, a whiff of urine and stale air from long-ago tenement drug superstores on the Lower East Side all came back when I watched Robert Downey Jr. being hauled off again in handcuffs.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  The philosopher Thomas Nagel once asked: what is it like to be a bat?25 The point he was making remains important. If you aren’t a bat, you can’t tell what it’s like to be a bat, as this demands a comprehension of the bat’s first-person subjective experience. We may understand something about bats (such as the way they locate objects through echolocation), but that is an external third-person perspective, which doesn’t clarify anything about what it feels like to be a bat. Thomas Metzinger made a similar point, emphasising the divergence of two completely different ways of thinking or experiencing: an ‘inner’ account (a ‘first-person perspective’) and an ‘outside’ account (a ‘third-person perspective’).26 I often feel that some atheist critiques of religion are based on uninterrogated external assumptions about what religion must be and how religion must feel, lacking any sense of intellectual curiosity or cultural empathy that might motivate them to understand what religious people think and mean by words such as ‘faith’ or ‘belief’. Terry Eagleton is one of many cultural critics to make this point: ‘imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.’27 Philip Pullman is much more alert to the complexities of faith than Dawkins, highlighting the importance of a ‘sense that there is a power bigger than us’ which is ‘deserving of attention and respect’, while at the same time rightly expressing concerns about the entanglements of organised religion with money and political influence.28 This tendency to misunderstand or misread religious terms may help us understand why atheist critics of religious faith often focus on purely propositional understandings of belief, or interpret God in terms of imagined teapots orbiting distant planets, or ‘sky fairies’ that do not match up with either the self-understanding or experience of religious believers. As has often been pointed out, ‘what the atheist rejects is seldom what the theologian or believer professes.’29 The outcome is inevitable: the dialogue partners misunderstand each other, shooting past each other rather than engaging in a meaningful conversation. Thinking of religious beliefs in terms of ‘cosmic teapots’ suggests that they are essentially a form of ‘knowledge through description’, along the same lines as scientific statements, making no personal claims on the person who holds these views. This view of religion as a misguided and outdated form of science, set out originally in James Frazer’s Golden Bough (1890), misses the point completely.30

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  We do not engage in many dialogues like this today. The debates in our parliamentary institutions, the media, academia, and the law courts are essentially competitive. It is not enough for us to seek the truth; we also want to defeat and even humiliate our opponents. The malice and bullying tactics decried by Socrates are embraced with enthusiasm as part of the fun. A great deal of this type of discourse is a display of ego. There is no question of anybody admitting that she does not know the answer or has doubts about the validity of her case—even about complex issues for which there are no easy answers. Admitting that your opponents may have a valid point seems unthinkable. The last thing anybody intends is a change of mind. But while aggressive debate may be useful in politics, it is unlikely to transform hearts and minds—especially when an issue arouses passions that are already bitter and entrenched. In our highly contentious world, we need to develop a twenty-first-century form of Socrates’ compassionate discourse. For some years now, I have tried to counter the stereotypical view of Islam that has been current in the West for centuries but has become more prevalent since the atrocities of September 11, 2001. Like any received idea, it is based on what the Buddha called “hearsay” rather than accurate knowledge or understanding. So when politicians or pundits have insisted that Islam is an inherently violent, intolerant faith or inveigh furiously against the practice of veiling, for example, I have written articles, based on my study of Islamic history, to challenge this. But I have recently decided that this is counterproductive. All that happens is that my article is virulently attacked and my assailants rehearse the old ideas again with greater venom. As a result, the intellectual atmosphere becomes even more polluted and people remain entrenched in angry negativity. As the Daoists pointed out, we often identify with our ideas so strongly that we feel personally assaulted if these are criticized or corrected. Perhaps it would be better to take a leaf out of the Buddha’s book and start from where people actually are rather than where we think they ought to be. In such public debates, instead of trying to bludgeon other people into accepting our own point of view, we may need to find a way of posing Socratic questions that lead to personal insight rather than simply repeating the facts as we see them yet again.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  As silly and as sad as all Rob's social climbing, star-fucking, and ass-crawling might be: the TV Boot Camp where Rob had assiduously studied the fine art of simultaneously cooking and being telegenically charming, the dermabrasion to remove the evidence of an adolescent bout with acne, the ever-changing hair styles, one day straight, one day spiky, and suspiciously fuller these days at the crown (Jesus! Was he getting plugs?), the voice coach, the elocution lessons, the personal trainer, the constant sucking up to those miserable fucking shakedown artists at the Institute for Fine Food. Where were they now? Paul winced, thinking of all the whoring they'd done together, all the times Rob had put on his smile and floated and sucked up to Mortimer Hitchcock, the egotistical reviewer-slash-professional extortionist who published the ubiquitous Hitchcock Guide to Restaurants. More free food. More command performances at ridiculous charity events designed to do nothing more charitable than pump more gaseous air into Hitchcock's already bloated ego. An eight-cylinder hoodlum in the guise of an erudite diner, his face absolutely wriggling with corruption—he could probably teach the Genovese crime family something about coercion. Taste of Tribeca. Taste of Times Square. Taste of Gramercy Park. The ludicrous and thankfully short-lived "Res-taurantgoer's Manifesto," an attempt by the loathsome author publisher to elevate his status to more Jeffersonian heights. And Food Week! More bite-size portions of free food, more freebies. Chefs all around the city had to dumb down their menus, discount chicken or salmon for a bunch of cheap, useless shut-ins in cat-hair-covered skirts and basketball sneakers who'd just as soon be sucking down the early-bird special. What was that line in Taxi Driver? "Someday a big red tide is gonna come and wash them all away"? Paul hoped so. Jesus it was hard. It was probably hard being Rob Holland, who'd had to figuratively (or literally) French kiss all of them. Paul, though he'd been working without a day off, sixteen or seventeen hours a day, for three months while Rob worked the room, took day trips to the Hamptons and Aspen and Paris, wouldn't have traded places with him for any amount of money or fame. He just couldn't summon any animosity. Because Rob could cook. Because even now there was something of a little boy in Rob, so desperate for affection and respect, a yearning, Paul thought, for the day when the kid from Revere could look at himself in the mirror and be happy and proud of what he saw there. He did, however, resent that it had been left to him to break the news about the bonus situation. It made him feel even more complicit in all the madness and stupidity. And Christmas. It had to be Christmas. He sat there, holding his head, feeling like a Vichy French shopkeeper—in bed with the enemy.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  And who would listen to anyone who can visit Thailand—a country with one of the most vibrant, varied, exciting culinary cultures on the planet (including a rich tradition of tasty vegetarian fare)—and refuse to sample its proudly served and absolutely incredible bounty? What kind of cramped, narrow, and arrogant worldview could excuse shutting oneself off totally from the greater part of an ancient and beautiful culture? To my mind, there's no difference between Woody, the New Age gourmet, ensuring a clean colon by eating the same thing every day, and the classic worst- case, xenophobic tourist—the one who whether in Singapore, Rome, Hanoi, or Mexico City insists on eating every meal in the hotel restaurant. One fears "dirty" water, "unsafe" vegetables, "ooky," "weird," and unrecognizable local specialties. The other fears "toxins" and "impurities." It's bad enough when you bump into a curmudgeonly fellow countryman while on vacation in a foreign land. But to bring his tao home with you is another thing. Especially when the curmudgeon's worldview has been shaped in that crossroads of enlightenment, Hollywood. In striking contrast, Trotter's curiosity is a saving grace. And Trotter and Klein's creativity with a self-imposed restrictive form is something to be celebrated—I guess. Raw struggles mightily to convince the reader that "cheese" made from cashew can be a satisfactory substitute, and that "lasagne" made from zucchini "noodles" wouldn't be a hell of a lot better with the inclusion of some real pasta, but even the book's full-color food porn photos seem painfully lacking in some vital aspect. (Pork, perhaps.) Raw is a quantum leap in the realm of what's possible with fruits and vegetables. But by offering comfort, sustenance, and encouragement to Woody Harrelson and would-be Woodys everywhere, Trotter and Klein have opened a Pandora's box of fissionable material. At a time in history when Americans, to an ever greater extent, have reasons to turn inward, away from this fabulously diverse and marvelous planet and the millions of proud cooks who live on it; at a time when people are afraid of just about everything, the authors have made willful avoidance and abstinence an ever-more attractive option. I admire their skills. I really do. But I fear for the planet. IS ANYBODY HOME? It was late at night in New Orleans. The liquor was flowing and the large and unruly group of chefs, managers, and cooks, freshly released from their restaurants, was in a truth-telling mode. Among them, a contingent of professionals from one of Emeril Lagasse's better restaurants was particularly disgruntled. Not with Chef Lagasse, about whom they had nothing but nice things to say; and not with the general state of affairs in their restaurant, of which they were quite proud. It was those damn customers again. "They come in in their ugly shorts, with their cameras. And they ask, 'Is Emeril in the kitchen? Can you get him to come out and say "Bam!"?'" moaned one of them. "Dude! We're a fine dining restaurant!"

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  How might this be done? One way of applying Wittgenstein’s critical method is to look at the world through a series of potential informing ‘pictures’ or ‘worldviews’. We cannot dispense with these pictures; we can, however, ask which is the most reliable and appropriate. For Wittgenstein, a ‘picture’ changes the ways in which we see things. We can look at reality through a range of such pictures, and ask which of them offers the best rendering of our world. As Gordon Baker points out, Wittgenstein sets out ‘a kind of homeopathy’ in which ‘pictures are to be treated with pictures’.26 His philosophical therapy involves a willingness on our part to explore comparisons, leading to a ‘conversion to a new way of seeing things’. How well does it make sense of what we observe? What does it tell us about ourselves, and other human beings? Does it promote fulfilment? Or does it trap us in a limited and limiting world, such as Max Weber’s ‘iron cage’ of rationalism? The first step to securing freedom is to realise that alternative ways of seeing the world are available. Wittgenstein’s critical analysis is invaluable for those who find themselves shackled to a bad philosophical system or individual ‘bad beliefs’,27 and want to break free from their thrall. As with the approach of Alcoholics Anonymous, Wittgenstein’s first step is to force us to realise that we are ‘captive’ – that we have trapped ourselves within a limiting worldview, and need to break free from its constraints and distortions (Wittgenstein is particularly helpful to those recovering from the existential nihilism of scientism). Some worldviews offer us reassurance that the world is coherent and existentially inhabitable. Yet others are often constructed to justify the marginalisation, exclusion or even persecution of others. The most familiar example of this is the dehumanising racial ideology of National Socialism, which treated Jews, Roma, Poles and Serbs as Untermenschen (‘sub-humans’). However, similar racial ideologies became influential in the United States after the First World War. During the 1920s, William McDougall – chair of the Psychology Department at Harvard University – advocated disenfranchising blacks, restricting intermarriage between races and complete segregation of blacks from whites on ‘scientific’ grounds.28 A decade later, Wallace Fard Muhammad, the founder of the ‘Nation of Islam’ in the United States, set out a creation narrative which claimed that blacks were ‘God’s Original People’, and that ‘whites were grafted into existence by Yakub, an evil black scientist, around 6,000 years ago.’29 Sadly, there is no shortage of ideologies which cause one set of human beings to regard others as representing a lower form of life – and hence as not entitled to the respect and rights afforded to proper human beings. Belief systems can easily lead to the construction of a moral framework that privileges some and legitimises discrimination and violence against others or gives a dangerous amount of normative or interpretative authority to a particular institution. The author and journalist Arthur Koestler learned this lesson the hard way.