The Wisdom of the Theologian

[trotsky]

onager provided a link on another thread to a lovely takedown of Karen Armstrong by Jerry Coyne, of the Why Evolution is True blog. (A great read, BTW.)

Anyway, on that post was a comment so insightful I thought it deserved special attention. It seems to describe where so much frustration comes from when dealing with believers and defenders of religion - especially the ones who adore the Karen Armstrongs of the world and their banalities.

Here is the direct link to the full comment, which is worth a read: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/the-incoherence-of-karen-armstrong/#comment-1098232

Some highlights:

they continually associate “wisdom” with abstraction and generalization. It’s easy to see how this attitude seems supported because we associate “words of wisdom” with doing exactly that: having a broad enough perspective to describe a wider truth.

The example given is the Nietzsche quote - whatever does not kill you makes you stronger. Sounds great, but not really true when it comes to things like polio or losing a limb or suffering brain damage, right?

The person who wants to be rational and understand reality to the best of her ability will want to examine any number of specific instances to see to what degree the saying is true, or in which type of situations it would in fact apply. But this is seen as petty work, the work of small minds, to the generalizers such as Armstrong. Stay up in the clouds, with me, I’m giving you the Big Picture. Get stuck in particulars, and you’ll lose the truth.

Sound familiar? You may also know this is as the "gotcha" question - 'How DARE you find particular instances in which my self-proclaimed wisdom and insight don't apply?'

Sure we may agree there is truth in a generalization like “Parents have a right to discipline their children” but any *particular instance* of this discipline should nonetheless be consistent with other principles we hold to. That’s why we always have to be able to zoom back down through various levels to keep checking on this consistency, to any particular. It’s why we would say the principle just stated is applicable to, say, taking away “internet time” from a child who isn’t doing his homework, whereas we would NOT allow someone to invoke “the right of a parent to discipline his child” if where the “discipline” involved torturing his child with fire. It’s wise to apprehend general principles; it’s wiser to look at and understand their limitations.

I agree, this is where true wisdom is found. Some may not want to get bogged down in details - but that's exactly where we need to look at how our grand pronouncements work. Much like Tip O'Neill used to say: "All politics is local."

And this seems to be how Armstrong’s mind works. Someone like Jerry (and many of us here) are actually interested in reality, so we want to check any general principles or claims against the *specific instances* they are supposed to cover. When we go checking and find that, well, actually, all sorts of people are saying specific things about God that don’t support Armstrong’s generalities, then we are doing the work of the petty, the small minded who can’t Think in the Big Picture, the blinkered perspective of the scientist in the lab coat wanting to run trials, vs much broader, and wiser, perspective of Armstrong’s philosophical understanding of religion.

An attitude displayed not just by Armstrong but many you yourself may have interacted with, hmm?

[edgineered]

1. Agreed

should Armstrong ever decide to plot a course for DU she would be disappointed to find her desired username already in use.

[onager]

2. Thanks! Here's another great comment...

Alexandra - Posted November 18, 2014 at 2:40 pm

Just love “theobabble”! Will use that one. She throws out a miasma of words, wrapping them around the theo-leaning listener(s) like a spider web and immobilizing, stunning any brain cells they might have had.

She was recently on Cspan, with S Quinn, who seemed on the same stupefying wave length.

Theobabble! Perfect! I'm stealing that one too.

An attitude displayed not just by Armstrong but many you yourself may have interacted with, hmm?

I certainly see many people in Other Groups taking Armstrong's long, leisurely view from up there in the ivory tower. They often come off as Real Smart people. I know that because they write sentences of 1500 words with 47 subordinate clauses and parentheticals nested within meta-parentheticals. Awesome. They make James Joyce seem terse.

Unfortunately I don't have an ivory tower. So I'm stuck with my plebian, grubby view from the ground. Where, as I've ranted before, I've actually seen mobs of Xians and Muslims trying to kill each other in Egypt. I should've probably stepped in and told them to go read some Armstrong...

[progressoid]

6. Theobabble IS perfect.

It reminds me of something in school we used to call Artspeak. Reviews of art or artists using overly pompous & wordy statements that are supposed to impress but instead repel.

[AlbertCat]

3. My favorite exchange!

Don’t call her “Dr Armstrong”. She failed her PhD.

She maintains that Oxford’s decision to refuse her a doctorate was one of history’s great academic scandals. But the truth is she’s no intellectual. Her pose as a scholar is a marketing device.

************

Ah. I guess I’ll just classify her expertise as: “nun of the above.” …has a mystical kind of ring to it.

[trotsky]

4. "nun of the above"

[skepticscott]

5. Many other vapid individuals indeed

And they also kiss the ass of people like Armstrong because they worship her viewpoints (and their own) as "nuanced", which in the end means fuck-all, but it makes their toes curl and lets them put their noses in the air.