Not in everything, I hasten to disclaim. Atheists can be perfectly intelligent, sometimes even brilliant, in any field unaffected by their atheism.
Yet the moment they try to argue against the existence of God, even otherwise bright people start sounding like petulant children at best, braindead fanatics at worst. And Yevgeny Ponasenkov, the brilliant Russian historian of Russia’s Napoleonic Wars certainly isn’t an exception.
The other day I mentioned his rant against Greta Thunberg and everything she stands for as a typical example of Russian intemperance that compromises even sound views. That’s not the only thing he is a typical example of. He is also living proof of the statement in the title above.
In the same article, I wrote: “That he is an atheist is to be expected, but that’s strictly his own business. However, when Ponasenkov argues in numerous interviews and articles that religion, especially Christianity, is the root of all evil in the world, he throws his scholarly integrity to the wind.”
A historian’s articles and interviews on various subjects are one thing; his day job is another. Since Ponasenkov is indeed a brilliant historian, I dipped into his magnum opus, his seminal monograph on the 1812 war, to see if it vindicates my point. I was richly rewarded.
Ponasenkov sets his stall early by explaining why all other historians are pygmies compared to him. You see, he is a materialist who understands Darwin’s theory of evolution. That is the only possible starting point for any scholarly foray into history.
This is arrant nonsense on every level. First, it’s a non sequitur – belief or disbelief in God has nothing to do with systematic study of history, one way or the other.
If a historian treats his subject as strictly a gradual unfolding of divine providence, he isn’t a historian. He may be a theologian or a philosopher, but those are different, if sometimes adjacent, fields. And a secular philosopher who drags his atheism into his field sows it with weeds, stunting the growth of his thought.
I still think that an atheist scholar in any field, especially the humanities, suffers from insurmountable limitations no matter how sound his thought and painstaking his research. But such limitations will show very far down the road, and there is still plenty of solid ground to cover before that point is reached.
Just as religion has no immediate impact on the study of history, neither does Darwin’s theory. Again, a historian who sees his subject as merely the biological evolution of Homo sapiens, may be many things (such as a propagandist, zealot or simply an idiot), but definitely not a historian.
And anyone who believes that Darwinism is incompatible with religious faith is simply wrong. God can create things either instantly or slowly – that’s why he is God.
I happen to regard Darwin’s theory as slipshod, politicised nonsense, at least as an overarching explanation of life. But that judgement is based on an assessment of purely scientific and intellectual arguments pro and con, not on my faith.
This is to say that Ponasenkov’s first shot across the bows of faith misses by a mile. He is an atheist who sees Darwin as gospel truth, but that has nothing to do with his subject. His remark is thus a propagandist diatribe I could charitably ascribe to his youthful exuberance (he was born in 1982).
Then he writes: “I cannot help mentioning that the most detailed and comprehensive answer to the question of why the findings of physicists, biologists, geologists, paleoneurologists do not confirm ancient mythology [that is, Judaeo-Christianity] was found and published in his 2006 monograph The God Delusion by the Oxford professor, great scientist Richard Dawkins.”
This is gibberish that doesn’t become a serious scholar and doesn’t belong in Ponasenkov’s important work. The God Delusion isn’t a monograph – it’s a vulgar and ignorant tract on a subject about which the author knows nothing but emotes a lot.
Neither is Dawkins a great scientist. He is merely the author of lamentably popular books that tickle all the naughty bits of modernity. “Darwin explains everything,” writes Dawkins, and no one capable of making that statement can be described as even an average thinker. Before things evolve, they have to be – and Darwin never even attempted to explain how biological organisms had come into being.
Ponasenkov matches Dawkins’s inanity with his own. Expecting the Bible to vindicate every finding of modern science is committing a category error. Natural science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God, that’s not what it’s for. But while we are on the subject, Genesis “explains everything” much more convincingly than Darwin does – as accepted even by many atheist scientists, some with Nobel Prizes to their name.
His ideologically fervent ignorance of subjects outside the scope of his monograph leads Ponasenkov astray even in his comments on history. Thus he quotes approvingly another fire-eating atheist who ascribes Russia’s troubles to her Byzantine religion.
According to her (and Ponasenkov), Byzantium had no redeeming qualities. That view is common to atheist intellectuals who proceed from a false syllogism: Byzantium was a Christian empire; Christianity is a lie; ergo, Byzantium was useless.
This is the actual quote: “Just think: a civilisation, heir to two of the greatest civilisations of antiquity, existed for several hundred years without leaving A-NY-THING after itself except architecture, some books for the illiterate, lives of saints, and fruitless religious debates.”
Books for the illiterate presumably include the works of John of Damascus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Michael Psellus and other great Byzantine theologians. That’s where that syllogism kicks in: they were all Christian writers, so they wrote “books for the illiterate”. The effort had to be in vain: illiterate people wouldn’t have been able to read their works, but Ponasenkov won’t be deterred by such small inconsistencies.
And “except architecture”? (Ponasenkov ignores great Byzantine iconography, without which Renaissance painting wouldn’t have been what it became.)
During that period of our – Christian, Mr Ponasenkov – civilisation, architecture was the principal and most poignant expression of the nascent culture. That role was later ceded to music, but dismissing Hagia Sophia, Basilica Cistern, Chora, Basilica of San Vitale and other sublime Byzantine structures as culturally and civilisationally inconsequential is, well, ignorant.
At a less sublime level, the Byzantines were also innovative military engineers. For example, having settled in Rus’, the Vikings sought to conquer Byzantium next, the bigger fish to fry. However, that particular fish began to fight back by unsportingly using the unique chemical compound, probably petroleum-based, to which the Vikings referred as ‘Greek fire’.
That invention, along with the first hand grenades in history, also thwarted the Arab onslaught on Constantinople – while different Byzantine units communicated with one another through another invention, the beacon system.
Yes, God does punish atheism, and not only in the next life. In Ponasenkov’s case, that’s a shame because his book is an important study of Russian history. And Russia’s present is a child of her past, which makes history an essential applied science. Ponasenkov is right about that.
“I happen to regard Darwin’s theory as slipshod, politicised nonsense, at least as an overarching explanation of life. ”
I guess you can suggest at that exact moment that was the best they had to go with.
I don’t care for Dawkins either. He has a reptilian quality I’ve always found rather unnerving. But to suggest that ‘The God Delusion’ is anything other than a brutal blow to religion is, I think, completely unsustainable.
If I so say myself who shouldn’t, I think I’ve sustained it pretty well, in both articles and books. If you want to read a brilliant demolition of Dawkins, try The Atheist Delusion by Bentley Hart. Dawkins can be taken seriously only by people who are as ignorant as he is, which is to say the majority.
But isn’t Christianity supposed to be an egalitarian religion? How can a Christian in good conscience deny the experience of the majority?
You have! Another good one is ‘The Dawkins Delusion’ by lovely Alistair McGrath. They are best of friends irl.
‘The Dawkins Delusion’ isn’t a book, it’s a pamphlet written by a man at the end of his tether. You’ll be invoking William lane Craig next!
I’ve listened to Dawkins arguing the non existence of God and heard nothing that I couldn’t have heard 50 years ago.
Where Dawkins has contributed something is that he has moved on to attacking Christianity as a malignant force in history. True, there have been bloody and oppressive episodes perpetrated by people in the name of Christianity. But it never seems to cross the minds of the detractors that if these have occurred under the banner of a religion which teaches love of one’s enemies, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile etc, what on earth would things have been like in its absence ?
We have a clue about that in Islam and in the pre-Christian classical world. Dark Age backwardness and unforgiving Dark Age nastiness of Islam are well known, or ought to be.
Both Greece and Rome were slave economies. Aristotle thought that some people were naturally slaves. Rome was a Nietzschean society which literally worshipped power in the Emperor who had most of it or was power personified while slaves who had none had no legal personhood. It was a society which watched the butchery in the amphitheatres for centuries and considered compassion to be a weakness.
Christianity overturned all that, endowing every individual, however lacking, with equal dignity as an equally loved child of God, made in his image. From this has flowed a thousand and one benefits, now taken for granted, including modern democracy,
Ironically , Christianity was a necessary although not a sufficient cause for the rise of modern empirical science, by which Dawkins et al set such store . That’s true also of the Enlightenment, so called, which would not have occurred but for Christianity . A key characteristic of Christianity has been its faith in reason, and it is from this that the Enlightenment was derived. Sadly, without Christ it slipped down almost inevitably to the ghastliness of the 2oth Century.
I’ve listened to Dawkins arguing the non existence of God and heard nothing that I couldn’t have heard 50 years ago.
Where Dawkins has contributed something is that he has moved on to attacking Christianity as a malignant force in history. True, there have been bloody and oppressive episodes perpetrated by people in the name of Christianity. But it never seems to cross the minds of the detractors that if these have occurred under the banner of a religion which teaches love of one’s enemies, forgiveness, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile etc, what on earth would things have been like in its absence ?
We have a clue about that in Islam and in the pre-Christian classical world. The Dark Age backwardness and unforgiving nastiness of Islam are well known, or ought to be.
Both Greece and Rome were slave economies. Aristotle thought that some people were naturally slaves. Rome was a Nietzschean society which literally worshipped power in the Emperor who had most of it or who was power personified, while slaves who had none had no legal personhood. It was a society which watched the butchery in the amphitheatres for centuries and considered compassion to be a weakness.
Christianity overturned all that, endowing every individual, however lacking, with equal dignity as an equally loved child of God, made in his image. From this has flowed a thousand and one benefits, now taken for granted, including modern democracy.
Ironically , Christianity was a necessary although not a sufficient cause for the rise of modern empirical science, by which Dawkins et al set such store . Thats why it arose in the Christian West and nowhere else. That’s true also of the Enlightenment, so called, which would not have occurred but for Christianity . A key characteristic of Christianity has been its faith in reason, and it is from this that the Enlightenment was derived. Sadly, without Christ it slipped down almost inevitably to the ghastliness of the 2oth Century.
The English writer (philosopher?) John Gray, an atheist himself, says in one of his books that in England today you are more likely to find an intelligent man among the religious than among atheists.
That’s just the sort of contrarianism I’ve come to expect from Gray.
“And anyone who believes that Darwinism is incompatible with religious faith is simply wrong. God can create things either instantly or slowly – that’s why he is God.”
Maybe not religious faith in general, but I’d argue that it is incompatible with Christianity. Darwinism requires death to precede the emergence of man, yet Romans 5:12 tells us that “death entered the world through one man, and death through sin”.
Yes, but before that happened the man had had to exist and sin. I still see no contradiction there.
Perhaps I misunderstand. Under Darwinism man couldn’t “exist and sin” unless there were preceding millennia of death (which Romans tells us only came after sin). Further, Romans tells us that sin was introduced to all mankind through one man. If Adam was only one of many when he first sinned, there’d be a multitude of generations that never inherited a sin nature.
I haven’t read Ponasenkov, but I’ve read Gibbon. The great merit of Gibbon is that he loves truth even more than he hates God, with the result that he describes the history of the controversies between the orthodox and the heterodox more lucidly than any Christian author I know. If Ponasenkov has similar merits, he may become a classic.
Dr Dawkins’s favourite of his own books is The Extended Phenotype, and it’s one of my favourites too. Aristotle would have been proud to have written it, and St Thomas Aquinas would have quoted it often if he’d read it. Only a small adjustment to St Thomas’s philosophy would have been needed. And Dr Dawkins might be less of an atheist if “Christians” didn’t send him so many death threats. I like him as much as I like Gibbon, and I pray for them both.
As for the Byzantines: St Maximus the Confessor is the most difficult author I’ve ever attempted to read. But where I think, provisionally, that I’ve understood him, he seems to me to be the equal of any philosopher who’s ever lived. I recommend Chapter 10 of the Ambigua: it’s 94 pages of uncommonly difficult Greek, but Nicholas Constas provides a helpful parallel translation in his Harvard edition.