Elaine Pagels on the "New Atheism"

On January 6th at six o'clock I was at the Central Congregational Church on Angell St in Providence, Rhode Island to hear Elaine Pagels talk about the most controversial book of the New Testament, The Book of Revelations. It was a free lecture, and interesting. She set about answering several questions, including: Who wrote the book? Why was it written? and How is the book interpreted today? 

 

For the most part I found her explanations quite helpful in understanding the book. I really liked the way she broke down the timeline of events in Jerusalem, giving the book a historical perspective. Things became woo-y during the Q & A though, as Pagels attempted to explain how Jesus might have actually made an accurate prophecy about the destruction of the Jewish Temple, even though many now consider the prophecy to have been inserted after the fact, as in many years after the death of Jesus. She was quick to point out that it did not matter to her thesis whether or not Jesus actually made the prediction, but she was willing to entertain the idea that perhaps he did, which would have been miraculous, or at least incredibly prescient.

More bothersome to me was Pagels' cheap attack on the so-called new atheists that came right at the end of her lecture, in answer to a question from the audience. She made the completely untrue claim that Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens do not (or did not) understand the importance of emotion in religious belief.  This is of course completely wrong. Of course they understand the importance of emotion in such beliefs, it is central to their very criticism. Here's Hitchens on the subject:

Does this mean that the inexplicable or superstitious has become “obsolete”? I myself would wish to say no, if only because I believe that the human capacity for wonder neither will nor should be destroyed or superseded. But the original problem with religion is that it is our first, and our worst, attempt at explanation. It is how we came up with answers before we had any evidence. It belongs to the terrified childhood of our species, before we knew about germs or could account for earthquakes. It belongs to our childhood, too, in the less charming sense of demanding a tyrannical authority: a protective parent who demands compulsory love even as he exacts a tithe of fear. This unalterable and eternal despot is the origin of totalitarianism, and represents the first cringing human attempt to refer all difficult questions to the smoking and forbidding altar of a Big Brother. This of course is why one desires that science and humanism would make faith obsolete, even as one sadly realizes that as long as we remain insecure primates we shall remain very fearful of breaking the chain.

 In the God Delusion, Dawkins points out:

It is amazing how many people seemingly cannot tell the difference between 'X is true' and 'It is desirable that people should believe that X is true'. Or maybe they don't really fall for this logical error, but simply rate truth as unimportant compared with human feelings. I don't want to decry human feelings. But let's be clear, in any particular conversation, what we are talking about: feelings, or truth. Both may be important, but they are not the same thing.

I don't think that Pagels was being dishonest when she misrepresented the views of these two men. I think she mistakes their stridency for intolerance, and spoke out of ignorance.  She created a straw man atheist and decried its views, but really, when one can allow themselves to be seduced by the possibility of Biblical miracles, one has already abandoned logic.