Source: Newsatesman
BY John Gray
To think of this book as any kind of scholarly exercise is a category mistake. The purpose of Pinker’s laborious work is to reassure liberals that they are on “the right side of history”.
“Opposng reason is, by definition, unreasonable.” Steven Pinker is fond of definitions. Early on in this monumental apologia for a currently fashionable version of Enlightenment thinking, he writes: “To take something on faith means to believe it without good reason, so by definition a faith in the existence of supernatural entities clashes with reason.” Well, it’s good to have that settled once and for all. There is no need to trouble yourself with the arguments of historians, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists, who treat religion as a highly complex phenomenon, serving a variety of human needs. All you need do is consult a dictionary, and you will find that religion is – by definition – irrational.
Similarly, you don’t need to bother about what the Enlightenment was actually like. By any standards, David Hume was one of the greatest Enlightenment thinkers. It was the sceptical Scottish philosopher who stirred Immanuel Kant – whose well-known essay on Enlightenment Pinker quotes reverently at the start of the book – from what Kant described as his “dogmatic slumber”. Pinker barely mentions Hume, and the omission is not accidental. He tell us that the Enlightenment is defined by a “non-negotiable” commitment to reason.
Categories: Book Review
Thank you for the link to this review. I just started his book and look forward to commenting later. – TM
He does not make the argument that religions do not serve a purpose. Durkheim established clearly early on that religion does serve a purpose, in social cohesion, in his analysis of the suicide rates of catholics and protestant. Religion does serve a purpose according to Marx as well, it is the opiate of the masses. Weber sees religion as instrumental as well in shaping the society we live in.
To take issue with one argument (faith is irrational) and to use the utility of faith (functionality) as “evidence” against the argument is misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question: a red herring argument.