Book chapter
Response to Morgan’s critique: Doug Porpora
Critical Realism and Spirituality, pp 157-166
2011
Abstract
In his response to our book, Transcendence: Critical Realism and God, Jamie
Morgan refers to Margaret Archer, Andrew Collier and me collectively as
ACP, an acronym charmingly evocative of the vital chemical ATP. Here, I
too will generally follow that usage. Although I am writing here singly as the
sole incarnation of that trinity, my views, except where indicated, are shared
by my co-authors.
The first thing I want to say on behalf of us all is how much we appre-
ciate and admire Morgan’s response to us. In our book we speak of what
Jews call Haverim, study partners on the path to truth who respectfully or
forcefully challenge each other to ever better formulations of whatever is
under examination. In his response to us, Morgan embodies that ideal
perfectly.
In the current climate, Morgan’s effort is no mean feat. We wrote Tran-
scendence in defense of religion just before an onslaught of overheated
attacks on the same, most notably, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion,1
Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great,2 and Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation.3 These books, all written by big names, have all received
considerable attention. Penned, however, with disdain and filled with wild
punches, all are aimed at the kind of village atheist who is used to romping
on simple-minded fundamentalists.
To be sure, many of the religious in the Abrahamic faiths truly are
fundamentalists or close enough. To be sure as well, there is much in fundamentalism – in all its various forms – that is both rationally indefensible
and morally reprehensible. Like many religious, however, we, i.e. ACP, are
not fundamentalists, not even close. When, therefore, believers like us are
the target, assaults on fundamentalism widely miss their mark, representing instead attacks on what Americans call a ‘straw man’ and Australians an
‘Aunt Sally’. As such, they are the sort of ‘beginners’ error’ in philosophy
that rather undermines any avowed championship of rationality.
In a kind of ‘monster-barring’ manoeuver, Dawkins would limit the reli-
gious to the simple-minded and treat us ACP-types as imposters. It would be
as if one were to attack Marxism by dismissing all its forms beyond Stalin’s
Diamat.
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Details
- Title
- Response to Morgan’s critique: Doug Porpora
- Creators
- Douglas Vincent Porpora - Communication
- Contributors
- Mervyn Hartwig (Editor)Jamie Morgan (Editor)
- Publication Details
- Critical Realism and Spirituality, pp 157-166
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Communication
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85121953840
- Other Identifier
- 991019173878604721