Edward Feser, at Right Reason, links to a 1980 article in Time magazine discussing the revival of philosophy of religion.
"It discusses the resurgence of interest in the classical arguments for God's existence that was just then getting underway, and in particular the work of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, James Ross, Mortimer Adler, and others..... It is amazing how embarrassingly lightweight the "New Atheism" of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens is compared to the work of these thinkers.... It is also embarrassingly lightweight compared to the work of Mackie, a serious and formidable philosopher for whom all theists ought to have respect."
I thought some of you might enjoy this stroll down memory lane.
Kevin
Are you suggesting that Dennett is not a serious and formidable philosopher? I think you need to defend you use of the word 'lightweight' in your description of the 'new atheists." Seems rather ad hominem to me.
By the by, as an atheist, I do appreciate the work of theists who, like those you mention, take the time to reason and present argumetns in support of their positions. After all, we do need someone to argue against.
John,
I suggest no such thing. The only two sentences that I wrote are the first and last of the post; the rest is (quite clearly, it seems to me) a quotation from Feser.
Hi Kevin
Actually only now that you point it out it is obvious but previously I, like John, thought you were making the claim not Feser.
Maybe indenting the quoted paragraph would make it more obvious?
Cheers
David
I had used Moveable Type's block quotation feature. But now I've added quotation marks to make it more clear. Sorry for any confusion.
No worries, it is basically a setting issue rather than your fault. I suspect in a longer post it wouldn't be an issue, but having just a line either side of the quote made it harder to spot. The quote marks make it crystal clear.
Cheers David
Kevin
Thanks for the clarification.
It's clear Kevin. The font in the quoted portion is not the same, either. But there's a small point here. I thought John's concern was that you made the quote without disapproval. I don't know, is it bad to reason this way: X quotes Y without disapproval, therefore X does not disapprove of the quoted material? Like I said, it's a very small point. Here's the slightly larger point. Even if you did not disapprove of the quoted portion you would not be suggesting that Dennett is not a serious and formidable philosopher. Nothing in the quoted section says that. It says that Dennett's new atheism stuff is lightweight. This particular work of the philosopher, not the philosopher. Obviously, much of Dennett's other work is formidible.
Mike, there was an additional sentence on the end that Kevin has now removed:
But the "New Atheists" evidently have two things Mackie never had: a well-oiled PR machine, and a vast audience of philosophical illiterates who wouldn't know a serious argument for theism if it fell on them from the sky.
I'm not suggesting that he's done anything inappropriate by removing it, just that if you first saw this post without that you'd have less of an appreciation why some people above are saying what they're saying.
For the record, I don't think including it in the quote constitutes agreement with it, given typical blogging conventions for blockquotes. It's surpising to me that not everyone involved in this conversation is familiar enough with that particular blogging convention to have understood its significance.
Actually, for the record, while the additional sentence that Jeremy mentions does follow directly after the part of Feser's post that I quoted, I didn't include it and then remove it. Rather, I never included it.
And, also for the record, my intention in quoting only part of Feser's post (which I linked to for those wanting the whole thing) was to reproduce those parts that I thought might be of most interest to PBers.
Jeremy, just to second Kevin, I don't recall that bit of the quote ever being there.
It is not (on my behalf & I think John's) that we think that Kevin is asserting that Feser's comment is correct by quoting it. Quoting doesn't necessarily imply endorsement.
It was just that the quotation was unobvious, so we were confused and thought Kevin was making the assertion rather than quoting someone else making that assertion.
Cheers
David
I am raising the epistemological point and skipping the rest. I know where Kevin stands and I'm supposing that's settled. So forgetting about this particular case, I don't know what exactly the convention is, blogging or elsewhere, on drawing inferences from quoted material. Obviously, quoting does not necessarily entail endorsement. Short of that, it does not strike me as irrational for X to infer that Y does not disapprove of the content of a quote if Y does not explicitly or implicitly disapprove of it. Notice that the inference here is to Y not disapproving of it. The inference is not to Y approving of it. But there even seem to be reasonable inferences to Y approving of it. Consider, for instance, if Y were to quote some translation of Kant that, in fact, is mistaken. I would not see it as irrational that X infers that Y believes the passage is not mistaken. I would not see X's correction as somehow inappropriate. But I'm not certain of my intuitions on these cases.
Really? I was sure it was there. Maybe it's just that everyone was responding to it as if it had been there, and my memories have been altered as a result. Now that I think about it, I wonder if maybe another blog I was reading had also linked to it and did include that line.
I don't see why one would construe Feser as committing an ad hominem. He doesn't attack the authors to impugn their work. He simply makes the defensible claim that in comparison to the work of Plantinga, Mackie, etal, the work of the "New Atheists" is lightweight. I'd be surprised if most readers even disagreed with that claim. With good reason too. The target audience for these works is different. I certainly don't expect to see the work of the "New Atheists" popping up in graduate seminars. More problematic for the "New Atheists" works is that they have been widely panned by philosophers and scientist that you'd expect to be on the team.
Mike,
I think the translation case might be a special case because it's easy to doubt that the person is knowledgeable of the original language. However, as a general point I think bloggers frequently link to items that readers might find of interest with little concern as to whether they agree or disagree. I'd think that the only endorsement is one of readability.
Its an interesting epistemological point Mike, but I guess intuitively it comes down to the framing & context. Usually the blogger will say something either positive or negative about the quoted section which makes their view clear. If they don't then I would read it that they neither endorse nor unendorse the view but as Matthew says they endorse the readability of the piece.
That said I can see your point and do think that sometimes it is a reasonable inference to make.