A couple of (potentially illuminating) thoughts on the topic of ad homimen
First, my larger and prevailing criticism of our own dear Immanuel, who really does serve an important role on this forum and has for a long time, is found in my designation of him as an Evangelical Christian fanatic. Naturally, he reacts when this term is used because it does imply
defect. But if I come out with such an aggressive posture against the religiously-minded, and label the foundation of their religious belief as based in religious mythologies (which is what I truly and honestly do believe), I do not believe that I am engaged in a
fallacious ideological enterprise.
It is a very curious and somewhat disturbing problem
which I personally face and I will try to clarify what it is. Doing so, I hope, I will clarify my own position within these conversations, always contentious, always bordering on acrimony, that go on perpetually on this forum.
So let me say that I have an established
ad hominem (against the man and against the men) position against nearly the entire enterprise of Evangelical Christianity in America today. American Christianity is a bizarre creature. In order to understand it one has to understand the two great American revival movements (the Great Awakenings) and also, and I think importantly, the religious foment that took place in the so-called
Burned-Over District of western New York state in the 19th century.
The term "burned-over district" refers to the western and parts of the central regions of New York State in the early 19th century, where religious revivals and the formation of new religious movements of the Second Great Awakening took place, to such a great extent that spiritual fervor seemed to set the area on fire.
Just examine the strange religious neo- and post-Christian branches (or cults) that developed out of that cauldron! These amount to religious innovations as new and radical, and also powerful and influential, as so many American trends and traditions -- as for example in music. America is, in this sense, a cauldron of radical experimentation and innovation.
Now, I place all of this in the context of the present. Meaning, that what went on previously can be traced through the decades and directly into the present. The present state and condition of American Evangelical religion -- and here I do not hesitate to label it a psycho-social phenomena that borders into deeply psychological territory in which people *hallucinate* and *project* all manner of distorted and tendentious imagined material into the fabric of life-lived -- is a psycho-social engine driving people and groups into really weird territories. I label these *half-maddened* not because I desire to condemn any particular man, or Evangelical believer, but because it is a social, political and philosophical
duty to do so. Is this ad hominem?
Well,
yes and no.
Here of course I face a problem and it is one that I do not know how to surmount or to deal with fairly. I will try to explain. I spent a good number of years in a non-official study of European Christianity with a focus on Catholicism. One of my first influences was Christopher Dawson's
The Historic Reality of Christian Culture: A Way to the Renewal of Human Life (1 January 1960). The gist of the book proposes pretty much what it states in the title. It makes a claim, and attempts to set out to demonstrate it, that a Christian philosophy and (perhaps I might say) the inner turning that this entails,
will lead to the 'renewal' that he advocates for. His other titles of course (listed
here) developed the perspective that he brings forward in the apologetic book I just referred to.
Let's say that I *drank deeply* from these ideas and perspectives and this impelled me to investigate the roots of the religion in Europe, It is a whole, wide and deeply interesting territory. Christianity and Christian values as defined and expressed by genuine practitioners is fundamental to Europe and European culture. You will never, ever be able to disassociate all of that from what Europe is, and thus what we are. If that is the object, it is a futile and also a negatively-geared one.
But the *problem* is still as real as ever: the insane domain of religious hallucination, and the projection of psychological material into and onto the world in our present. The chief example I refer to is that of American Christian Zionism. Now, if I express what I really think about this, will that also be labeled as ad hominem? Will the content of my view and observation be dismissed because it is *fallacious argumentation*? Come now! I mean
really.
So it turns out that if I or if someone is capable of believing something really & truly absurd and impossible -- I use the example of the belief that God
paddycaked man into existence in a primordial garden and that this is the genuine beginning-point of
real history -- that one shows oneself capable of believing
anything. But this stands in some contradiction to what Chesterton said: "The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything."
So how do you *believe in God* and thus avoid the condition that Chesterton warns about, without falling into the myriad traps of uncritical religious belief? Because let's face the facts: the way things work today is that when a given person is exposed to a critical perspective of Christian fundamentalism, and when they see the nutjobs who infect the religious cults and entrance the multitudes, they naturally veer away
from religion generally. They move to a secular position. And here I refer to about 80% of Europe. And here, naturally, Immanuel Can will find those who are *corrupting* the
Christian meta-narrative that he holds dear and regards as vital to the salvation of his soul and (according to him) all souls.
Once you have become (as I say) unmoored from a specific religious ideology, you must arrive at new sets of definitions about life, meaning, value and purpose, or -- and here I will riff off of Chesterton's assertion -- you will become captured and enthralled by other currents that seem not to be religious and yet also seem to involve similar currents of religiousness, except applied to other systems of belief.
Now, Immanuel Can will likely label what I have written here as *rambling* and *wrong* and Heaven knows what else --but why (I ask)?
So let me sum up here by saying, again, something about the use of acute criticism of men and how they think, and what they think, and what they do when they are (say) captured by negative currents or currents of mass-thought. I mean specifically attacks against the man. Direct criticism of how men are. How distorted they can become. How unregulated in their thinking. How prone to the *hallucinations* I refer to. How susceptible of manipulation.
What do you propose? That I *blame ideas* only?
My position is that a) one must become capable of enunciating ideas in a fair, direct, and coherent manner, and at the same time b) not hold back from a sharp and direct critical analysis of the failings of men both in men *out there* (people, society) and in one's own self! The real art (if I can state it like this) of the use of criticism of the man is
that one does not keep oneself out of it.
Therefore, if I have referred to *religious fanaticism* and if I label it as a
negative, it must also be stated that I, as all of us, are as susceptible to it, in some form or other, as those we find it so easy to label. This is a Jungian idea I think: it is easy to see the *shadow* in others and to react against it, but harder, and yet imperative, to see the same things we criticize as operating in ourselves.
Oh, the projection! The chief lover of the ad hominem thinks all his opponents use ad hominems to argue.
