Generosity - an academic construct?

By means of an explanation of the stated concept of generosity, I must take you back to March of this year. In the first class of one of my subjects this semester at university, our lecturer/tutor/what have you discussed the notion of being ‘generous’ in the way we read texts and deal with arguments; something I found rather intriguing. I think at some levels it is a bit old hat, but it was a really great reminder to treat other people’s arguments with respect and balance. What she was referring to was in essence trying to get inside the mind of the theorist whose work we were reading. Be generous in that if you can try and empathise with their position and what they’re trying to express, that would make your analysis somewhat more developed and even handed. I thought that this was really interesting because of what I’ve found in theoretical analysis we, as the respondent, tend to just look at a text at its face value and pick out small areas of the argument and tar the rest of what they have to say with the umbrage that we have built up against them.

Further to this, for those who find the concept of blogging pretentious, self-absorbed and generally wrong, I hear you. Whilst I am fundamentally writing this for my own benefit, I am essentially acting like the remora to the shark – attaching myself for the ride, costing the world nothing, and gaining for myself transportation. In this case the transport that I’m mooching is for my ideas to get to those people who would have an interest in reading them and hopefully giving me some manner of feedback, which can only help in developing these ideas further, reassessing where I may have missed something or been completely wrong. To reiterate, please, be generous.

Another, perhaps more outwardly focussed take on the issue of academic and critical generosity that jumps to mind for me is the response to the works of the New Atheist movement. As a Christian, I naturally have a vested interest in a movement who declares that ‘God is dead’ and that religion is essentially the cause of all evil, therefore it is to be discounted and rejected on all fronts. I think a lot of defences or attacks upon religion and atheism are conducted in a way that is fundamentally rash and lacking in this concept of academic generosity. If either side of the argument is to actually provide an even-handed, justified position, I would find it difficult to accept a case that is utterly dismissive of any fault in their own behaviour and logic. Such a criticism can be levelled at either party, and I feel that if more people within each side of the debate were to allow for more generosity (as it is here defined) then there would not be such a need for the venom that seems to coincide with any minor disagreement over worldviews.

To illustrate my point I would refer to both the criticisms levelled for and against. Firstly, many of the criticisms which popular atheism would level against religion I would argue are essentially one-eyed and biased in the extreme. Take for instance the arguments in regard to the death and destruction caused by, or in the name of certain religions. Clear instances are wars such as the Crusades, where under the banner of the cross and the war cry of deus vult (God wills it), thousands of soldiers from the great European empires tore through the Levant, murdering, pillaging, raping and burning. Clearly none of these actions are reflective of Christian theology which preaches the two greatest commands as to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and to love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-31 and Luke 10:25-28). Similarly, the religious persecutions during this time – the Inquisition, burning of heretics and the like – are indelible marks against the church that cannot be overlooked. That all being said, the greatest mass-murderers of history have all come out of 20^th Century atheism – Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Between them, tens of millions of men, women and children lost their lives in war, death camps and genocide. Simply in terms of scope, the damage done by these four men is far worse than any other event in all time. The simple existence of widespread death and destruction is not simply a religious construct; it is seen to be a human construct that will appear irrespective of that particular individual’s attitude towards God. Much like the faults of Christianity over history, neither can the glaring mistakes of atheism be ignored.

As much as this kind of evidence raises questions of both religion and atheism, taking a generous stance to the points raised would mean that these claims are taken seriously and responded to. I cannot speak for the atheist perspective, as it is not one that I would feel appropriate representing, but in terms of Christianity, it is important that such levelled criticisms are not simply ignored. We cannot hide from the reality of the destruction that has been done in the name of God, whether in war or in the treatment of ethnic minorities and children (or anything else for that matter). There have been, and will be all manner of faults within the community of Christians given our nature as sinful humans living in a broken world. We are not perfect; we cannot be perfect by our own efforts. This does not mean that we accept failings such as those of which we are criticised for. By assuming the church’s infallibility (as some are want to do), this ignores and rejects legitimate criticisms that need to be dealt with. The generous way to respond to the arguments of the modern-day atheist movement is not to sweep them under the rug, but approach them on their merits, accept fault where fault is found and work to improve the situation.