I had such high hopes for this book. It was billed as “part literary criticism, part philosophical exploration,” a dialogue between a believer, Kenneth Francis, and a skeptic, Theodore Dalrymple, over the search for meaning following the cultural death of God. I envisioned a skillful rhetorical fencing match. I imagined a graceful intellectual tango. What I witnessed was a blindfolded, three-legged sack race.
As a cheerful, Epicurean-style skeptic, I’m always open to the possibility that someone might offer a new way of thinking about the big questions. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard most of the religious arguments, but who knows, more things in heaven and earth and all that, maybe I can still be surprised yet. Instead, Francis’s contributions are the epitome of predictability. He makes one reference in passing to the supposedly-sophisticated arguments being put forth by modern theologians, but he himself is content to rely heavily on what I like to think of as the Dostoevsky fallacy — “without God, everything is permitted” — which he obligingly quotes early on. Any critical caltrops you might think to scatter across his path, such as the fact that the worst of human nature was in clear evidence long before God’s existence was seriously questioned by the French philosophes, or the fact that billions of people have found ways to develop culture and live meaningful lives separate from the axioms of Christianity, would be useless against the rhetorical steamroller Francis is driving. In essay after essay, to paraphrase Matthew 12:30, you’re either with Jesus or you’re with Pol Pot. I’ve seen fingerpaintings with more delicate brushstrokes than this.
The book is structured as alternating essays, with each author addressing different books and plays. Waiting for Godot is the only work to receive attention from both, with a brief three-paragraph “conversation” between them following. Admittedly, I got the book because of Dalrymple’s name on it; I didn’t know or care anything about Francis beforehand (and I certainly don’t care to know anything else afterward). Dalrymple’s contributions are interesting, as usual, though I tend to think of his New English Review Press publications as generally being his second-string essays (and, as is typical of an NERP book, typographical errors abound, which is mildly annoying). But the contrast between the two authors’ efforts side-by-side is like listening to chamber music punctuated by a kazoo and penny whistle. Francis’s essays aren’t just bad, they’re comically bad. It’s as if a WorldNetDaily column mated with a YouTube comment thread. The non-sequiturs and overall lack of subtlety and nuance attain a perverse sublimity as he free-associates about how the pebble of Holden Caulfield is responsible for the rockslide of post-’60s decadent hedonism. Oh, you think I’m exaggerating.
I have often wondered whether the American novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is a literary hoax, a kind of Leftist propaganda manifesto manufactured to discredit traditional family values. And is it not coincidental that the Leftist generations after its post-1950s publication, were generally disaffected, drug-addled American youth who had become spiritually poisoned during the sexual revolution by a Godless culture culminating decades later in glorifying a toxic entertainment industry with vile lyrics and vulgar role models?
…Isn’t it strange that Salinger, who wrote this frequently censored, anti-family, blasphemous, rebellious, violent, promiscuous, pro-smoking/drinking/lying book became a recluse? Was the cliff in the rye field an imaginary threat, where ‘little children’ must be protected by their Big Brother? A generation of brainwashed sheep kept in line by a ‘good’ shepherd? Or is the story an autobiographical psychological projection of Salinger’s world view? Was he a Marxist? Perhaps we’ll never know.
Sometimes comment would be superfluous, and all that’s left to do is back away slowly.
But since we find ourselves in this rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking, perhaps we should ask: is this book intended as covert atheist propaganda? Did some godless sodomite set this caricature up to discredit the very idea of intelligent religious thought? Is Dalrymple being blackmailed to lend his name to this atrocious effort? Perhaps we’ll never know.
January 2, 2019 @ 2:22 pm
How disappointing, but I’m glad you’ve read it for me so I don’t have to. I attend Mass at a traditional Dominican parish near my home. I’ve been through periods of skepticism and periods of ardor down the years, and though I know all the pros and cons of the debate, I couldn’t even begin to argue for the faith. How could I, when, personally, it seems I can’t help but believe? The Gospel, the Creeds, the Sacraments, the historical theology of the Church – to my own surprise, at this point in my life, I bow sincerely to all of it. If someone demanded an explanation from me, I’d have to say something inadequate, like “because it’s beautiful.” But that’s not an argument.
January 2, 2019 @ 3:00 pm
I read one of Francis Spufford’s books a few years ago, and the vague impression I retain is that he said much the same thing — he wasn’t defensive or pugnacious; if anything, he seemed mildly apologetic at most, while still making clear that he just couldn’t help but believe. I thought, well, fair enough, no problem with that. “Because it’s beautiful” works well enough for most people’s purposes.
I lost any and all interest in the ins and outs of theological arguments right around the time the social justice virus erupted among online atheists, shortly before it began pervading everything else. It’s clichéd to say so, but ideology/belief is far downstream from character. Now I’m just genuinely curious to see how other people make sense of the world.
August 14, 2019 @ 2:47 pm
I hope you don’t mind my commenting so late on this post.
The passage on “The Catcher in the Rye” that you quote is genuinely funny: “…this frequently censored, anti-family, blasphemous, rebellious, violent, promiscuous, pro-smoking/drinking/lying book…” Wow! The writer must have led a very sheltered life if that’s how he thinks of what is, in reality, a very moral book!
But may I pick up on a point that is, I realise, at best tangential to the thrust of your post? I refer to what you term the “Dostoevsky fallacy”.
I don’t know that it is very fair to attribute this fallacy to Dostoevsky himself. The expression occurs in “The Brothers Karamazov”, and is attributed to Ivan Karamazov, but we never actually hear Ivan say this. At one point, this line is quoted back at him, and he merely smiles, and says sarcastically “Dmitri’s version of it isn’t bad either”. “Dmitri’s version” is the interpretation that is usually given to this line – that is, if God were not to exist, there could be no such thing as morality. But Ivan’s sarcastic quip indicates that this is *not* what he had meant: Ivan is, after all, a very subtle thinker, and is unlikely to mean something quite so crude. And even if he did, it does not follow that Dostoevsky endorses him: Ivan is far from Dostoevsky’s mouthpiece.
So what *does* Ivan mean? There is no definite answer to this, but the line is so important in the novel, we are forced to consider different possible interpretations. And we must consider these interpretations in the knowledge that Ivan did not mean it in the sense that it is commonly interpreted (i.e. in the sense that Dmitri interprets it); and that, whatever Ivan means, we cannot attribute that to Dostoevsky himself.
Here, I must go into my own personal interpretation (and I certainly do not pretend that my interpretation is in any way final or definitive). What I think is meant is that if we reject the idea of God, then we must reject also the idea of morality as something revealed to us from a divine source; and so, if we are to adopt a moral code at all, we must create our own. And in creating our own, we cannot appeal to a divine will, because such a thing does not exist: we must start with carte blanche. Hence, “everything is permitted”.
And I think it goes further: even if we do succeed in devising for ourselves a moral framework without any divine guidance, under what compulsion must we consider ourselves to be bound by our own creation? At this point, I must confess that it all gets too complex for my simple little brain. But I think we are well beyond “Dmitri’s version”, which is that only if we believe in God can we live a moral life, and that if we do not believe, we can do what we like. “The Brothers Karamazov” is, of course, too profound and too subtle a novel to endorse, or even to suggest, anything like that.
Best wishes,
Himadri
August 14, 2019 @ 6:29 pm
Hi, Himadri — no worries about commenting on a post from the archives. Good conversations don’t have an expiry date!
It has probably been twenty years since I read The Brothers Karamazov, so once again I thank you for remembering the details. You’re right, and I certainly don’t intend to credit/blame Dostoevsky for the idea behind what I called his fallacy. I only used it here as a semi-serious shorthand, referring primarily to the way I’ve seen it quoted in general — that is, people who are at least passingly familiar with literature cite the novel whenever they want to bring up the idea that the absence of Christian belief necessarily leads to nihilism. (I believe Francis did exactly that in the book I was reviewing, though I’m loath to even pick it up again to check for sure.)
To go further along the conversational lines you’ve traced, I would agree that in the absence of any proof, or consensus, about God’s existence, the best we can do is puzzle things out ourselves. I don’t think that’s entirely, or even mostly, a rational process, though — I think morality has enough of a naturalistic foundation in our evolutionary history as a social species to be fairly robust despite whatever intellectual propositions people assent to at any given time. People are indeed capable of behavior from angelic to horrific, no matter what rational justification they back it up with. Technically speaking, everything is “permitted,” but in practice, certain behaviors and practices are more likely to lead to balanced flourishing. Or, to put it another way, just because everything is equally possible doesn’t mean that everything is equally likely.
Thank you again for stopping by and offering up a good discussion. Please feel free to do so whenever you’re in the neighborhood.