Saturday, August 22, 2009
Get Plucked
Ouch!A.C. Grayling, one of the "New Atheists," in the course of an otherwise well-deserved bashing of William Dembski's bogus requirements for his classes at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, takes off after Jesuits:
In the aftermath of the Reformation in the 16th century, Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit Order as an army of defence against the attack on the One True Church. The Jesuits saw that the reformers had learning and intelligence on their side; they were translating the Bible into vernacular tongues, and encouraging lay people to read it, and when laymen did so they could see that the doctrines and practices of the Roman church were a mountain of rubbish. The Jesuits aimed to be an army of very smart casuists and propagandists, skilful in rhetoric and argument, trained to counter the reformers' charges, not interested in truth but in Catholicism's tendentious version of it.
ThonyC, a historian of science, has a post up at his blog, The Renaissance Mathematicus, showing that Grayling may just be indulging in a little unthinking cultural bias. In fact, Jesuit and Jesuit educated and trained scientists made substantial and crucial contributions to the evolution of science from the late sixteenth up through the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries.
The painful part is Grayling's statement that:
The painful part is Grayling's statement that:
If anyone does not know how to pluck from history and the contemporary world examples of [those who smugly embrace ignorance] then he is either deaf, dumb, blind and illiterate – or he is one of the creatures of faith.
Since Grayling shows some acute lack of ability to aptly pluck such examples from history, one has to wonder which category he falls into.
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"not interested in truth but in Catholicism's tendentious version of it."
Really? My impression of the Jesuits is that they were and are intellectuals, renegades, and dissenters who were/are not always in step with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. A quick, cursory search on Google confirms this impression.
Really? My impression of the Jesuits is that they were and are intellectuals, renegades, and dissenters who were/are not always in step with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. A quick, cursory search on Google confirms this impression.
As I said at Wilkins' place, my experience with them is quite contrary to Grayling's caricature and I suspect that the story you found greatly understates how long the Jesuits have been "off the reservation," since my contact with them began almost exactly 40 years ago and there was no sign that it was anything new.
I'm fairly ignorant of Catholic political history, myself, but Thony's piece seems to be saying that even when the Js were on the reservation it didn't impede scientific progress the way Grayling claims it did (brilliant propagandists though they no doubt were).
Also, does anybody else find it strange that translating scripture in to the vernacular was supposed to have this great and feared Sunlight Effect? Catholics and protestants use the same bible, more or less. Were Luther and Calvin stealthily hoping to turn everybody into atheists? Meanwhile the doctrines and practices the Protestants reviled so much, such as transubstantiation, or the selling of indulgences, were in plain sight all along. What is Grayling talking about?
Also, does anybody else find it strange that translating scripture in to the vernacular was supposed to have this great and feared Sunlight Effect? Catholics and protestants use the same bible, more or less. Were Luther and Calvin stealthily hoping to turn everybody into atheists? Meanwhile the doctrines and practices the Protestants reviled so much, such as transubstantiation, or the selling of indulgences, were in plain sight all along. What is Grayling talking about?
Thony's piece seems to be saying that even when the Js were on the reservation it didn't impede scientific progress the way Grayling claims it did (brilliant propagandists though they no doubt were).
Yes, I agree. I was only referring to the basis of the official disapproval Veronica's article revealed. I think Thony's follow-up article nails it when he says:
The whole point of the Jesuit education is to supply their scholars with the best and most accurate factual education possible while at the same time training them in the best use of correct logical argumentation. The point behind this education is to make the Jesuit able to demolish the arguments of his opponent by exposing the opponent false facts and false logic. Loyola realised that reliance on dogma and false argumentation would not enable the Catholic Church to win against the well educated and well informed Lutherans and only by being better educated, better informed and above all better trained in logic could he and his followers succeed in demolishing the arguments of their opponents.
That this has come to be known as being “Jesuitical” says more about the sting felt by their opponents than the intellectual abilities of Jesuits.
Yes, I agree. I was only referring to the basis of the official disapproval Veronica's article revealed. I think Thony's follow-up article nails it when he says:
The whole point of the Jesuit education is to supply their scholars with the best and most accurate factual education possible while at the same time training them in the best use of correct logical argumentation. The point behind this education is to make the Jesuit able to demolish the arguments of his opponent by exposing the opponent false facts and false logic. Loyola realised that reliance on dogma and false argumentation would not enable the Catholic Church to win against the well educated and well informed Lutherans and only by being better educated, better informed and above all better trained in logic could he and his followers succeed in demolishing the arguments of their opponents.
That this has come to be known as being “Jesuitical” says more about the sting felt by their opponents than the intellectual abilities of Jesuits.
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