Why modern atheism is so shallow

[Sniffles]

This is probably one of the best outlines of the philosophical weaknesses of the "New Atheists", even in regards to their Atheist predecessors, that I've come across.



Taki's Magazine: The Hollow Men: Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris

The Hollow Men: Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris

Posted by Erasmus Root on August 28, 2007


In over three decades of a vagabond life, I’ve had the good fortune to know some colorful atheists. The most memorable encounter, however, took place during a lunch in Lithuania. I had recently graduated from a small liberal arts college and, unable to find gainful employment in my native United States, flew to Eastern Europe to earn my daily bread as an English teacher. Thanks to some connections established through my alma mater’s Lithuanian librarian, I learned of some teaching positions in Klaipeda, a small Lithuanian port city that hugs the southern coast of the Baltic, and whose chief claim to geopolitical fame is a passing mention in the old German anthem “Deutschland Über Alles.” Now, Klaipeda hosts a fair number of expatriates, not only from North America but also from Scandinavian lands, and my most promising interview was with an oil company executive from Norway. Bjørn was managing a Swedish-Lithuanian joint venture oil project, and for some reason, felt it necessary to have the Lithuanian side of management learn conversational English. Bjørn’s need for an English teacher, and my aching need for funds, brought us together for our fateful interview at a Klaipeda cafe.

Everything about that lunch was pleasant, and yet pale. The café’s cream yellow walls were pleasant but pale, and so were the low-hanging Northern sun, the chilled and unsalted herring, the tepid tea in our little cups, and Bjørn’s own atheism. I had always associated atheism with passion—red-eyed anarchists swearing “No God, no master;” Milton’s tragically majestic satanic rebels, Prometheus’ daring theft of Olympian fire, and Nietzsche’s hypnotic dirges lamenting the death of the Judeo-Christian God. Bjørn’s atheism, however, had no suggestions or intimations of a soul-unnerving Göttersdämerrung. One could find more Wagner in a poached egg. Instead, atheism weighed lightly on Bjørn’s shoulders. God was not dead, but simply nonexistent. The daily rounds of life, the ordinary structure of a pleasant and bland existence, continued peacefully even in the absence of a God, heaven or hell. After finishing my herring and tea, I concluded that atheism was not a homogenous thing. There are great varieties of atheism, differing not just in intellectual content, but also in terms of feeling and emotional depth.

My memories of my lunch with Bjørn recently came to life again in the wake of a recent publishing buzz. Books attacking religion, faith and theism have become hot bestsellers. In particular, there is a troika of books that currently dominate the atheism publishing boom: Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Together, these three books make a formidable frontal assault on religious faith, particularly its Christian and Islamic varieties. They have different styles and emphases—Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, stresses scientific topics, whereas Hitchens the journalist draws on his experience in reporting on religiously colored war zones such as Lebanon and Afghanistan. What they all have in common is an unrelenting hostility to religious faith as such. Faith is not just wrong or irrational. It is a positive evil, like drunk driving, diabetes or racism. There have been plenty of atheistic and anti-religious writers over the past two hundred years, but it is hard to think of any other period since the Enlightenment when such a concerted attack on the entirety of religion has made such an impact on the popular book market. What is it about our time that makes these books so appealing? Why do they resonate with a substantial portion of the reading public?

In the 1930’s, in the wake of the catastrophic Great Depression, everyone was talking about economics. During the Cold War, secular totalitarianism and nuclear weapons were the hot topics in political conversation. Since 9-11, the problem of religion has risen to central prominence, especially with respect to Islam. From suicide bombings to controversies over the veil, Westerners are debating whether and how Islam and democratic modernity co-exist. Islam, however, is not the only ingredient in today’s world that is causing political consternation. Religious conservatism around the world, from Baptist churches in the American South to Hindu temples in Calcutta, has made a vigorous and often noisy resurgence. In America, Evangelical and Catholic movements, often tagged with the labels “fundamentalist” and “religious right,” have been in the front lines of the so-called “culture wars” over issues such as abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage and the teaching of evolution and intelligent design. Thus, in both domestic and international news stories, we see the same theme of religion in conflict with modernity. This appears as a monstrously unsettling situation for many, especially for those who are secular or religiously liberal. To them, it seems that the whole edifice of post-Enlightenment modernity, from scientific naturalism to separation of church and state, is under attack by a pan-sectarian, global fundamentalism. Believers in the literal truth of the Quran, the Bible, and the Bhagavad-Gita, although they differ in their dogmas, seem to be united in their common hostility to secular democracy, and in their desire to impose a medieval theocracy upon the world.

Like all fears about universal conspiracies, this panic on the part of agnostics and liberals is somewhat exaggerated, but it has gained plausibility thanks to the efforts of two men. George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden are by no means twin brothers, but they have much in common. Besides coming from vast desert regions abounding in oil (Texas and Saudi Arabia), they are both prominent figureheads in the exploitation of religious faith for political advantage.

Bin Laden’s Al Qaida claims to be the liberator of an oppressed Dar-al-Islam, and casts itself as the heir of Mohammed, Saladin, and the Ottoman Empire. Everyone knows the Islamic (or apparently Islamic) character of this vile group. Bin Laden, however, embodies religious propaganda in the deepest personal way. Bin Laden does not rant and gesticulate like a Hitler or a Mussolini. His mannerisms and intonation are gentle and mild, and his posture is slightly stooped, giving an air of pious humility. Bin Laden affects the appearance of a pious religious teacher, as if he were some holy Sufi sheykh who has just emerged from a session of meditation and prayer.

George Bush, in a different way, also flaunts his personal religiosity. Many presidents have compelling narratives, using their personal autobiographies to give their administrations rhetorical legitimacy. Lincoln had his log cabin childhood, and John F. Kennedy had his PT-109 naval adventure. George W. Bush has always used his “born again” status to appeal to the evangelical base of the Grand Old Party. Born into wealth and privilege, Bush had no achievements of his own in college, the military or business. His one personal accomplishment is giving up alcohol, which he credits to his faith in Jesus Christ. Likewise, he tells the story of how his pastor convinced him that he was called by Christ to run for president. Although Bush does not explicitly mention Christ or the Bible with the frequency of Bin Laden’s quranic quotations, the theme of “faith” is the keynote of his presidency. The Bush White House specializes in launching grandiose ventures with an utter disregard for criticism, opposition, or any kind of feedback from reality. This is most famously clear in the case of the Iraq War, which will be remembered as one of the great instances of imperial hubris and disastrously smug self-confidence. This is also true, however, of his education, Medicare, social security and immigration endeavors. Bush has defended all of these quixotic ventures in flowery and idealistic language, at the heart of which is an appeal to faith. At bottom, Bush believes that he has a special relationship with Providence, and his confidence in his “gut feelings” does not waver one centimeter. The result of his confusion of obstinancy with faith is that the latter has become discredited. It is now common to speak of “faith-based” in opposition to “reality-based.” The appeals to faith made by these two very different—but equally reckless—leaders to justify their destructive decisions have helped ensure that the very word “faith” how leaves a dirty taste in the mouths of many. Thus, after 9-11 atheism takes on a special flavor—like a kind of mouthwash. It takes on a special appeal in a world dominated by a clash between two men who have divorced themselves from reality, to pigheadedly follow irrational and bloody projects in the name of “faith.”

Although I am not an atheist myself, I too share this repugnance to the use of faith as an instrument of political and ideological megalomania. And although I believe in God and revelation, I have a philosopher’s respect for good critical arguments, and I have always enjoyed the pugnacious style of fervent infidels such as Voltaire, Nietzsche and Mencken. Hence, a certain thrill of excitement and anticipation ran through me as I picked up my copies of Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins. What arguments would I encounter? What thunderous barrage of critical discourse would wake me, to use Kant’s phrase, from my “dogmatic slumber?” Would my faith be shaken by these reputable and bestselling authors?

Alas, instead of a terrifying and interesting storm of doubt, my ship of faith only encountered a few annoying water balloons. The sales of Dawkins, Hitchen and Harris might be red hot, but their content is just as pale and anesthetic as my herring lunch in Lithuania. Hitchens relates some telling anecdotes in graceful language, and Harris raises a few interesting points, but all in all these books have an imaginative and emotional flatness one does not encounter in the writings of classical atheists and agnostics. In style and content, these books have the same blend of quasi-journalism and sterile indignation that characterizes most op-ed pieces. Paradoxically, what separates Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris from the classical atheists and infidels of Western literature is the former group’s absence of religious feeling. As an example of atheism that has the depth of religious emotion, consider the statements of one eminent 19th century antichristian:

If God is dead, it is we who have killed him….We are the assassins of God….How did we come to do that? How did we manage to empty the sea? Who gave us a sponge to wipe out the whole horizon? What were we about when we undid the chain that linked this earth to the sun? Are we not continually falling? Forward, backward, sideways, in every direction? Is there still an above, a below? Are we wandering as through an endless nothingness? Do we not still feel the breath of the void on our faces? Isn’t it growing colder? Is not night always coming on, one night after another, more and more?

Nietzsche’s vivid and compelling language taps into humanity’s well of religious experience. Since God (or some supreme being or principle) has been the keystone of order and meaning in human existence, Nietzsche understands the atheistic denial of God to be a momentous event, at once titanic, tragic, and full of heroic promise. The point in saying that God is dead is that He was once alive. For Nietzsche and other “titanic atheists,” God’s non-existence does not contradict the historical fact of His importance. Nietzsche, along with other great infidels of the nineteenth century, could understand the psychological appeal of religion, and could thereby invest their language with something of the power and sublimity of a Gothic cathedral or a Bach cantata.

But what has happened to the atheism of our generation? Are we doomed to have an atheism without awe? For Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins emphatically do not feel the “breath of the void” upon their faces. For them, belief in God is a simple error, akin to a child’s faith in Santa Claus. Hence, for them disbelief in God has no earth-shattering social, moral or cultural consequences. In the absence of religious faith, we will continue to eat, drink, work, make love and sleep as before. The death of God occasions no dislocations to the cosmological or ethical first principles that frame our lives. As a substitute for religious faith, Dawkins and Harris advocate a naïve scientific realism, ignoring the basic questions of a modern or postmodern skeptic. In fact, it is fairly astonishing how Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are oblivious to the whole rise of postmodern skepticism. They do not bother to address the objection that, from Hume and Kant to Foucault and Derrida, a progressively secularizing West has grown increasingly less capable of maintaining the rational foundations of scientific realism. In short, they are oblivious to the whole problem of the loss of absolutes in the modern and postmodern eras.

 

[Sniffles]

Secure in their philosophical obtuseness, they confidently preach that morals are independent of religious faith. Of the three, Harris is the most philosophically explicit. He argues that ethics without God is possible because we can apply the scientific method to the investigation of the conditions of human happiness. This ignores the basic observation that ethics is not an empirical discipline like physics or chemistry, partly because of the disparity between “is” and “ought,” and partly because ethics relies on concepts such as “happiness,” “obligation,” and “humanity” that cannot be defined by laboratory experiments. Furthermore, on the issue of ethics without God, Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens misrepresent theologians’ traditional positions. Most classical theologians (at least Christian ones) argued that natural law and right reason support the basic moral principles that undergird society. The problem is that most people are not philosophers, and in practice we need the assistance of revelation and religious experience to make ethics a living reality. Ironically, our atheist authors make some shady ethical judgments of their own. Dawkins supports both abortion and euthanasia, and Harris makes extremely specious arguments for the use of torture (which is a strange position, since elsewhere in his book he inveighs against the Inquisition and witch trials).

The strange confidence of Hitchens,’ Dawkins’ and Harris’ assumption that atheism has no destabilizing social consequences is closely related to a popular fallacy which they all repeat and elaborate. The most common contemporary argument against religion is the charge of bloodiness. The Inquisition, witch trials, the Crusades, religious wars and conflicts from Northern Ireland to Lebanon and Sri Lanka, suicide bombings and jihad—again and again, some people have killed or tortured other people in the name of God and faith. For many of our contemporaries, this is a decisive argument against religion. Does not religious belief create divisions between people that result in persecutions and war? Hitchens and Harris both make this argument the centerpiece of their books. Hitchens draws upon his wide-ranging experience as a globe-trotting journalist to flesh out this argument with memorable stories and anecdotes. Harris uses both contemporary Islamist violence and on the history of the Inquisition and witch trials to make the generalization that religious faith as such has a murderous streak. Dawkins spends somewhat less time on the history of religious violence, but dwells on abortion clinic violence and religious opposition to stem cell research, homosexual rights and euthanasia, all of which he assumes the reader agrees are self-evidently good. Despite their variations, they all agree that the history of religion shows that it is an unmitigated evil.

This “religion is evil” argument suffers from a triple weakness. First, it ignores the fact that the twentieth century is one long proof that collective homicide can occur quite independently of religion. The militantly atheist regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha and other Communist tyrants far surpassed, in both absolute and per capita terms, the worst excesses of Christian or Muslim theocrats and inquisitors. Hitchens argues that Communists had a form of religious faith, but he misses the point that a godless cosmology provides no proof against fanaticism. Second, the “religion is evil” argument assumes that whenever religious differences are invoked, they are the primary causes of ethnic conflict. In fact, civil wars in the twentieth century show that ethnic differences are often primary, with religion serving as a strictly secondary factor. For example, the perennial Israeli-Palestinian-Arab crisis began as a largely secular conflict. The state of Israel was settled by secular Zionists, who were much more inspired by nineteenth century romantic nationalism than the Torah. And up until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Arab opposition to Israel was led by pan-Arabist nationalists, such as Nasser, the Baathist Parties, and the PLO. In Northern Ireland, the modern IRA is a semi-Marxist secular army, and Protestant and Catholic differences are often cultural rather than religious. In northern Iraq, Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomans have all historically been at each other’s throats despite their common allegiance to Sunni Islam. The murderous war in Sri Lanka—which saw the first extensive use of suicide bombing—is driven far more by ethnic than religious differences. The Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda share the same religion—as do the combatants on both sides in Darfur, Sudan. The third and most serious problem with the “religion is evil” argument, however, is the way it selectively picks events from religious history. It seizes upon every awful thing done in the name of God, while ignoring all the others. In the Middle Ages and early modernity, Christians did persecute heretics, kill witches and wage religious wars. Christians also built schools and hospitals, established systems of poverty relief, and re-established the rule of law after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Almost every achievement in the areas of art, music, literature, philosophy, science, law and even engineering (think of the Gothic cathedrals) was associated with faith in the Bible, Trinity and Incarnation. Similar points can be made about other traditional religious civilizations, whether Muslim, Hindu or pagan Greek. Hitchens’ mantra that “religion poisons everything” is a selective misreading of the historical record. Since in pre-modern societies everything was done in the name of religion, one could more easily say, “religion creates everything.” Singling out the evil from the good in the history of religion creates a gross caricature. It is actually astonishing how the authors fail to see this fallacy. Both Hitchens and Dawkins cite the Taliban’s destruction of the monumental Bamyan Buddha sculpture as an example, not of the barbarism of Islamic fundamentalism, but of the savagery of religion in general. And yet, the very object of the Taliban’s iconoclastic wrath was itself the product of religion. Why do they blame religion for vandalism but not credit it for the beauty that was vandalized?

Dawkins and Harris couple this blindness to the general structure of religious history with a sometimes sloppy disregard for details. Although Harris is a doctoral student, his chapter on the Inquisition and witch trials relies on secondary sources that are seriously out of date (in one instance, by over fifty years). He neglects the most basic current works on these topics that would be de rigeur for a freshman history paper. As a result, he exaggerates the tortures of the Spanish Inquistion (which would have been fearful enough had he stuck to the facts), and relates an anecdote that has no basis in fact which detracts from the reputation of a Jesuit opponent of witch trails (I happen to be writing a book on the Jesuit in question, so I have reason to know). On a more fundamental level, Harris’s neglect of the current literature on witch trials leads him to make a fundamental category error. He regards witch trials as an example of the evil of religious faith, when in fact they arose out of bad science. Demonology was a developed part of medieval and early modern natural philosophy, and the witch hunters thought they had empirical grounds for believing in witches, such as the testimony of pagan authors and the evidence of contemporary confessions.

But whereas Harris actually took the labor of reading some books, Dawkins apparently palmed off much of his research onto a lazy graduate assistant. This is not an exaggeration, but a plausible explanation for why an eminent scientist could give such a butchered account of St Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God. St Thomas’ famous five proofs, found in his Summa Theologica, are a staple of philosophical discussions about the existence of God, and I was actually looking forward to Dawkins’ critique. It had been some time since I studied these proofs, and I always had a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction with them. I was hoping that a lucid critique would shed some light on this important part of our Western heritage. Alas, Dawkins not only failed to engage St. Thomas at a philosophical level; he even failed at summarizing or paraphrasing him correctly. There are legitimate problems with St. Thomas proofs (mainly, that they are so tied to certain questionable principles of Aristotelian physics), but Dawkins fails to give them.

Dawkins’ sloppy reading of St Thomas Aquinas is a sample of his more general refusal to understand theologians. He makes it clear in The God Delusion that he has no respect for theology as an intellectual discipline. As a consequence, although he turns to elementary secondary sources (such as The Catholic Encyclyopedia) and a few primary sources, he can only give cartoonish renderings of theology. In my opinion, this is a far worse error than atheism. God is invisible, so disbelief has some justification. But the works of human beings are visible and tangible, and to deny the creativity and intelligence that has gone into centuries of theological argumentation is an insult to humanity. For example, St Anselm’s famous a priori ontological argument for the existence of God (i.e., that the very notion of God implies His existence) may not be sound, but it is a subtle piece of reasoning that has occupied the minds of geniuses such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and Bertrand Russell. As such, it is a testimony to the sheer power of human thought. Dawkins paraphrases it as a piece of schoolyard sophistry, a play on words that would be patently unconvincing in the twelfth century. At a deeper level, Dawkins fails to understand what theologians mean when they say God is “simple,” or how cosmological arguments for the existence of God operate. Dawkins denies the distinctions among science, philosophy and theology, and thinks that the existence of God is a hypothesis that can scientifically be shown to be probably false. The heart of Dawkin’s rejection of theism is his assertion that positing the existence of God implies an infinite regress. For Dawkins, if God started the universe, then something must have started God; if God intelligently designed the universe, then something must have intelligently designed God. He even calls God “the ultimate Boeing 747,” i.e., if a Boeing 747 must have been designed because it is so complex, the same must be true of God. Dawkins fails to get the basic theological point that the unity of God precludes any such infinite regress. If God exists, He is a purely spiritual principle beyond time and space, having no parts, interior divisions, or imperfections. Theologians do not assert that the mere existence of things implies God’s existence. Rather, certain qualities of physical things, such as motion, contingency, and composition of spatial-temporal parts implies the existence of a First Mover and Supreme Architect. Since God by definition does not have motion, contingency or composition of parts, God has no creator or designer. This is an elementary point that a scholar as smart as Dawkins could have gotten, if he had bothered to respect theologians’ humanity and actually read their works, rather than lazily allowing his eyes to glance over their printed words.

In contrast, Sam Harris does not address arguments for and against God’s existence (which is a pity, since he does ably philosophize about epistemology in The End of Faith). He seems to assume that the reader already accepts the thesis that faith in the Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic God is as mythical as belief in Zeus or the Easter Bunny. The chief target of his criticism is faith itself. For him, it is the way religious people believe, not what they believe, that is the greatest evil. Harris defines faith as holding something to be absolutely true in the absence of proof or evidence. The Kierkegaardian leap of faith is, for him, a leap into the dark that disconnects the mind from external reality. In an interesting move, Harris does not deny the validity of spiritual experiences, or the possible existence of a spiritual realm. Like many who claim to be “spiritual, not religious,” Harris endorses spiritual experience, but rejects giving spirituality a dogmatic shape through supernatural revelation. Revelation, concretely expressed in holy texts such as the Bible or the Qur’an, is a double evil: it demands absolute convictions divorced from evidence, and it binds people to outdated and barbaric beliefs and practices. For Harris, only the fundamentalist is a true believer. Harris calls the religious liberal “a failed fundamentalist,” because he believes in the sacredness of a text while selectively ignoring or rejecting whatever does not fit with modern civility. For Harris, faith, religion, revelation, fundamentalism and irrationality are all synonymous.

In his critique of faith and revelation, Harris does make some telling points. If faith is understood as a blind stubbornness to a conviction, it is the kind of evil that he describes (which Bin Laden and Bush illustrate). And its ill effects are compounded when it is combined with what he and others call “fundamentalism,” i.e., the kind of rigid adherence to a text that we see among the Taliban, less sophisticated evangelicals, and others. Still, Harris has no understanding of traditional religion or mainstream theological thought (including mainstream conservative religious thought), so his whole book attacks a polemical straw man. The vast majority of theologians and religious thinkers, especially in the premodern era, do not define faith as belief in the absence of any kind of evidence. Faith does transcend human reason, but it is not arbitrary, because it proceeds from rational signs and indications that point to the plausibility of faith. In the older kind of apologetic, one could prove the existence of God and His goodness, and establish that it would be fitting or reasonable for Him to reveal certain truths to us. Many contemporary theologians have less confidence in our ability to prove the existence of God in the manner of geometry. Nevertheless, they argue that the existence of a personal God fits the needs of the human heart. Human life becomes meaningful and rational once we posit the existence of a loving God, so it is not an arbitrary leap to believe in Him. Likewise, Harris’ assumption that all religious believers are either fundamentalists or radical liberals is a grossly false dichotomy. Orthodox religious thinkers such as John Henry Newman, C.S. Lewis or Hans Urs von Balthasar accept the whole of the Bible as a divine revelation, including all of the bloody parts of the Old Testament, but they do not advocate stoning adulterers or smiting Amalekites. The mainstream of orthodox Jewish, Christian and Muslim offers rules of interpretation that allow the believer to apply a religious text in a humane manner. In mainstream Christianity, for example, a distinction is made between the provisions of Mosaic law, which were binding only on ancient Israel, and the more general and flexible dictates of natural law, which is expressed in the Ten Commandments. For its part, rabbinical Judaism has an interpretative tradition over 2000 years old that also humanizes Mosaic Law. For example, whereas biblical law prescribes that a father can whip his children for certain offenses, rabbinical jurisprudence specifies that the lash be no thicker than a shoe lace. A similar tradition also exists to some extent in Islam. The philosopher Averroes served for years as a sharia judge, and he always managed to avoid chopping off someone’s hand or head. In short, Harris completely ignores how traditional Christianity, Judaism and Islam are able to combine faith and scriptural revelation with reason and compassion.

In the end, my final experience of our recent atheist bestsellers is a profound feeling of disappointment. An educated believer has nothing to fear from atheism, but he does have a beef with atheism that is poorly thought out. Anti-religious thought is valuable for theology as a kind of photographic negative of faith. It depicts the same scene, but with an inversion of light and darkness. Instead of being the ultimate principle of existence, God is a nothing—but then, negative theology is able to say that God is “no thing.” Atheism’s inversion of theology, through its bracing criticism, brings to light problems that lay hidden so long as we doze away in what Kant called “dogmatic slumber.” The emotions of the more sensitive atheists, such as Nietzsche, Mencken and Foucault, also reveal the significance of the presence of God by making us alert to the consequnces of his absence. But what value is an atheist book when the author knows neither the ideas nor the experiences of religious faith? Such an author ends up not attacking religion at all, and the believer is left with nothing to learn. Atheism after 9-11 begins with political concerns (terrorism, “culture wars,”) but it should move on to examine what thinkers such as Aquinas, Newman, Soloviev, Buber and Plantinga actually wrote. Perhaps some brilliant seminarian, after having immersed himself deeply into theology and religious history, will lose his faith and write a brilliant atheist book that has a bite. Until then, we will have to content ourselves with books by the older, more reflective infidels.


Erasmus Root is a pseudonym living in California.

 

[Sniffles]

Alas, instead of a terrifying and interesting storm of doubt, my ship of faith only encountered a few annoying water balloons.

I could easily say the same thing for the numerous Atheist arguments that have been presented here, in large part because they follow the same format laid out by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc.


I would sincerely would like to hear the take of the many Atheist members like Bluewing, Didums, Antisocial, and others on this piece.

By extension, I would certainly like to hear what even many believers like Jennifer and others have to say.

 

[Jack Flak]

I don't believe because I have no reason to, in all my observations, active or passive. I won't debate it though, I've personalized my conviction.

 

[Virtual ghost]

I would sincerely would like to hear the take of the many Atheist members like Bluewing, Didums, Antisocial, and others on this piece.

Do you still have me on your ignore list?

 

[Sniffles]

I can still read particular posts of yours if I choose to.

 

[Didums]

What kind of response are you looking for, cause that wall of text crit me for over 9000, should I just read the bolded parts?

 

[Sniffles]

The bolded parts are largely main points I wish to emphaised. Basically the author here has critiqued the weaknesses of the general approach atheists have taken to debating issues related to religion, and I noted how this apply to the arguments given here.

Overall there seems to be a gross ignorance of not only religious teachings, but religious history, and whatnot. At best, most atheist arguments seem to apply only to one form of religious expression(fundamentalism), and completely ignores the vast variety of religious forms that do exist, not to mention the numerous religious-based critiques of fundamentalism.

As far as history goes, you guys mostly parrot the history one learns in grade-school as opposed to one based upon more scholarly sources. This is especially true in regards to Catholicism, where all arguments not talking about pedophilia never seems to go beyond the year 1600. This isn't the Middle Ages anymore ok?

The centrality of current political concerns in Atheist polemics is very much on target, and there is indeed a relative lack of any interest in delving deeper into the what the various religious traditions really have to say.

And the general tendency to dismiss rather than actually attempt to understand religion or religious sentiment is a big weakness of modern atheist polemics. At least the older atheists showed more appreciation for the many aspects of religious belief.

Voltaire was no friend of religion, but he was able to speak positively of the way religion inspired women to sacrifice their youth for the care and betterment of others.

I was an atheist before it was cool, yet I myself spoke admirably of the many things religion had done for the enrichment of humanity. Disbelief in God does not mean disrepect for belief in God. Many atheists(particularly younger ones) seem to loose sight of this.

So yes, if you can address any of this, I would certainly appreciate it.

 

[TheLastMohican]

God and the New Atheism by John Haught is a good book with the same focus.

 

[Colors]

It's not a good argument if people aren't angsty about it? Check.

 

[Mempy]

I didn't read all of the article, but I did read most of it, surprising myself.

And the general tendency to dismiss rather than actually attempt to understand religion or religious sentiment is a big weakness of modern atheist polemics. At least the older atheists showed more appreciation for the many aspects of religious belief.

Voltaire was no friend of religion, but he was able to speak positively of the way religion inspired women to sacrifice their youth for the care and betterment of others.

I was an atheist before it was cool, yet I myself spoke admirably of the many things religion had done for the enrichment of humanity. Disbelief in God does not mean disrepect for belief in God. Many atheists(particularly younger ones) seem to loose sight of this.

I agree with you. I've long noticed this problem among atheists. And I do think it is a tremendous error to overlook what religion actually means to people and the significance it has in their personal lives. Because that is ultimately, to me, why religion has been around so long and why it will continue to be around: because of how it enriches people's lives on an individual, personal basis.

I kind of think of it this way: if there were not some universal human needs that needed meeting, and if religion did not satisfy those needs in some way, religion would not be a universal human phenomenon.

But what value is an atheist book when the author knows neither the ideas nor the experiences of religious faith? Such an author ends up not attacking religion at all, and the believer is left with nothing to learn.

I think this is important.

It's not a good argument if people aren't angsty about it? Check.

Haha. I noticed that it really did sound like that at one point, myself. Only I thought, "He's calling modern-day atheistic arguments against religion bad because they're not poetic and dramatic?"

 

[ajblaise]

This sounds like the problem is with a few notable and very opinionated atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens...), not atheism itself. I've heard Hitchens acknowledge in an interview some of the positive things religion has been a part of.

And the reason most atheist writers will focus on fundamentalism is because that's where most of what they consider to be problems arise from. I would encourage religious people to live by the most liberal interpretation of that religion that they can muster. The liberalization of religious followers is a good thing.

 

[Jack Flak]

I agree with you. I've long noticed this problem among atheists. And I do think it is a tremendous error to overlook what religion actually means to people and the significance it has in their personal lives. Because that is ultimately, to me, why religion has been around so long and why it will continue to be around: because of how it enriches people's lives on an individual, personal basis.

I kind of think of it this way: if there were not some universal human needs that needed meeting, and if religion did not satisfy those needs in some way, religion would not be a universal human phenomenon.

*opens can of worms*

I take issue with that, because oh crap, there is a huge elephant over there, look!

The elephant is the flipside to that coin. The bitterness between people it can also cause, and the reason to start wars religion provides.

Just making a point.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

Too much fluff in this first post.

Finally got around to one statement worthy of serious discussion.

They do not bother to address the objection that, from Hume and Kant to Foucault and Derrida, a progressively secularizing West has grown increasingly less capable of maintaining the rational foundations of scientific realism. In short, they are oblivious to the whole problem of the loss of absolutes in the modern and postmodern eras.

Before 19th century, intellectuals had a view that we can have certain knowledge and what we regard as knowledge now, we will probably regard as knowledge forever. Probably will not even need to question it again.

Starting with Kant, an element of human subjectivity has been introduced. It has merely evinced what has always been obvious. We can make mistakes in reasoning that we overlook, and we often have insufficient information to establish a proper conclusion. This means that we likely will need to consistently review our position to make sure that it is sound.

This does not at all vitiate the 'scientific realist' view. It does not oppose the claim that science almost always gives us reliable knowledge of the world, it merely shows that we need to be more careful than we have been before.

YouTube - Hilary Putnam on the Philosophy of Science: Section 1

Above is an excellent overview of philosophy of science and science.

Secure in their philosophical obtuseness, they confidently preach that morals are independent of religious faith..

The definition of religion is a set of dictates with regard to ethics, cosmology and eschatology. In order for a person to be confident in his ethics, he needs to understand why they are intrinsically good.

This ignores the basic observation that ethics is not an empirical discipline like physics or chemistry, partly because of the disparity between “is” and “ought,” and partly because ethics relies on concepts such as “happiness,” “obligation,” and “humanity” that cannot be defined by laboratory experiments...

Scientific investigation of ethics is possible through psychology and sociology. Studies have been done with regard to what activities are most reliable generators of happiness.

Furthermore, on the issue of ethics without God, Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens misrepresent theologians’ traditional positions. ...

Or rather, dozens of views that regard themselves as the 'traditional position'?

Most classical theologians (at least Christian ones) argued that natural law and right reason support the basic moral principles that undergird society. The problem is that most people are not philosophers, and in practice we need the assistance of revelation and religious experience to make ethics a living reality. ...

There can be no doubt that religion can force people to behave in a certain way, however, this leads to a deeper problem. People will be without an ethical backbone because all they know is what they are 'supposed to do' and not what they truly believe in. Could be easily manipulated by political demagogues and for this reason internecine struggles are an old companion to the folk of many third-world countries dominated by religion. These countries are also likely to remain in the third-world because religion stultifies the free inquiry necessary in order to concoct ideas which shall elevate the quality of lives of members of such societies.

Ironically, our atheist authors make some shady ethical judgments of their own. Dawkins supports both abortion and euthanasia, and Harris makes extremely specious arguments for the use of torture (which is a strange position, since elsewhere in his book he inveighs against the Inquisition and witch trials). ...

1)Abortion-One does not become a human being until he reached a certain level of intellectual capability. Not only abortion is justifiable under this clause, but also infanticide.

2)Euthanasia-There is no reason to believe that the person who has acquired the intellectual capabilities necessary in order to claim human rights does not know what is best for his life. The only reason someone should be denied the choice of euthanasia is if their intellectual capabilities are no longer at the level necessary to retain human rights.

3)I do not know anything about the views of Richard Dawkins concerning torture.

No argument is made in the article against such ethical positions.

The strange confidence of Hitchens,’ Dawkins’ and Harris’ assumption that atheism has no destabilizing social consequences is closely related to a popular fallacy which they all repeat and elaborate. ...

Many societies in Western Europe are highly atheistic, yet remain stable. However, the ethical nihilism (as argued earlier in this post) induced by religions leads to internecine struggles, therefore societal instability. The opposite is the case from what the author has maintained.

First, it ignores the fact that the twentieth century is one long proof that collective homicide can occur quite independently of religion.
...

What are the highlights of such 'collective homicide' occurences?

1)Stalin's Communism-Stalin imposed a set of ethics onto his folk, provided a cosmology (how the world works) based on the writings of Karl Marx, though most of this work has been done by his successor Lenin. And an eschatology, he probed into the spiritual questions of life and asserted that the replacement for the spiritual bargainings of the people, ought to be the Communist Welfare.
2)Hitler's Fascism-Similar vision as the communist welfare. Imposed a system of ethics. And certainly had all kinds of strange ideas with regard to how the world works and how it is.

Thus, both worldviews met the requirement for being religions.

1)System of ethics.
2)Cosmology
3)Eschatology
4)Regard the aforementioned notions as incontrovertible.

Almost all similar attrocities had this religious philosophical structure. Thus, the statement I have quoted is false.

Though the author does have a point, doing away with the God notion has very little to do with abrogation of religion, as the advent of Communism has evinced to us. In this regard Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are short-sighted.

argues that Communists had a form of religious faith, but he misses the point that a godless cosmology provides no proof against fanaticism. ...

True.

Second, the “religion is evil” argument assumes that whenever religious differences are invoked, they are the primary causes of ethnic conflict
...

In almost all cases, ethnic conflict was inspired by religion (consider the cases of Stalin and Hitler). Religion in itself has nothing to do with ethnic conflict, as it is a mere set of dictates. However, because these dictates are addressed to a very small group of people (though by definition of religion they need not be, they could be addressed to the whole world), and often exhorts those people to exterminate or to subjugate those who were not addressed. Secondly, even if a religion does not do this, the 'chosen people' experience a profound sentiment of self-apotheosis, where they believe that because the higher power regards them as his favorites, their judgment is superior to that of all others. They can do whatever they want in effect, as long as they manage to convince themselves that it is consistent with God's expectations.

In summary, yes, ethnic conflicts have emerged as an explicit cause of wars more frequently than religions. However, religions were the underlying cause of those ethnic conflicts. I challenge everyone on this board to come up with 3 examples of Wars close to the Callibre of the two World Wars, in the entire human history, that had nothing to do with religion.

The third and most serious problem with the “religion is evil” argument, however, is the way it selectively picks events from religious history......

In the Middle Ages and early modernity, Christians did persecute heretics, kill witches and wage religious wars. Christians also built schools and hospitals, established systems of poverty relief, and re-established the rule of law after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Almost every achievement in the areas of art, music, literature, philosophy, science, law and even engineering (think of the Gothic cathedrals) was associated with faith in the Bible, Trinity and Incarnation.......

This truly compares to the wars of the Calibre to the First and the Second World War.

He regards witch trials as an example of the evil of religious faith, when in fact they arose out of bad science.He regards witch trials as an example of the evil of religious faith, when in fact they arose out of bad science.....

Bad thinking is almost an inevitable consequence of religion, as religion insists on outdated and crude ideas accepted on authority. There are very few Aquinases, Maimonideses, Jameses and Pascals among us to withstand this influence.

He regards witch trials as an example of the evil of religious faith, when in fact they arose out of bad science. Demonology was a developed part of medieval and early modern natural philosophy, and the witch hunters thought they had empirical grounds for believing in witches, such as the testimony of pagan authors and the evidence of contemporary confessions.
.....

Philosophers would have had no reason to believe in witches or demons if such notions were not imposed upon them by religion.

As a consequence, although he turns to elementary secondary sources (such as The Catholic Encyclyopedia) and a few primary sources, he can only give cartoonish renderings of theology.

Can't blame him. With all the equivocations of the notion of theology and hundreds of incompatible worldviews equivocated under the same name, it is truly difficult to study them all properly. What is theology, Peguy? What is Catholic Theology?

In my opinion, this is a far worse error than atheism. God is invisible, so disbelief has some justification. But the works of human beings are visible and tangible, and to deny the creativity and intelligence that has gone into centuries of theological argumentation is an insult to humanity. .

There were very smart people who claimed they were religious. Were they truly though? Did they scrupulously follow the dictates from the book of dogma concerning cosmology, ethics and eschatology?

Dawkins fails to understand what theologians mean when they say God is “simple,” or how cosmological arguments for the existence of God operate..

Can we really blame him for not understanding what a theologian says?

Dawkins paraphrases it as a piece of schoolyard sophistry, a play on words that would be patently unconvincing in the twelfth century...

Most people who profess to be religious (common-place believers and preachers) have accomplished exactly what Dawkins described. Some of them were sharp, but they owe almost no credit to their religion.

Dawkins fails to get the basic theological point that the unity of God precludes any such infinite regress....

In that case God is all things, this means the same thing as unity of God. Therefore, the personal God of Judeo-Christianity cannot exist separably from this 'unity'. We know this is false, as this world includes more than one thing. God cannot be one of those things, as otherwise he would be all things, since he is that 'unity'.

If God exists, He is a purely spiritual principle beyond time and space, having no parts,.

As even here, the statement that God has 'no parts' hints at such a unity.

Rather, certain qualities of physical things, such as motion, contingency, and composition of spatial-temporal parts implies the existence of a First Mover and Supreme Architect.....If God exists, He is a purely spiritual principle beyond time and space, having no parts, interior divisions, or imperfections. Theologians do not assert that the mere existence of things implies God’s existence. Rather, certain qualities of physical things, such as motion, contingency, and composition of spatial-temporal parts implies the existence of a First Mover and Supreme Architect. Since God by definition does not have motion, contingency or composition of parts, God has no creator or designer.

He exists outside of time, and space, yet he is the first mover? First, implies in relation to WHEN other things have happened, therefore presupposes the existence of time. 'Moving' means changing position in space. Therefore God exists in time if he was the first mover. This means that he must have been created. Hence, the claim of Dawkins is vindicated.


If God exists outside of time, he cannot be a first mover. Morever, if that is the case, such a statement is logically equivalent with the statement that he does not exist at all. All things that the human mind is capable of imagining is in space and time. If our mind is incapable of experiencing an entity, as far as we are concerned it does not exist, as it has no bearing upon us. An entity is only relevant to our existence if it is able to influence us. An entity that has no relationship to our mind cannot influence us, it is therefore irrelevant.

In addition to all this it should be noted that God is not self-created. Nothing comes from nothing, therefore nothing can be self-created. If he always existed, he is infinite. Therefore all things had an origin in the infinite entity. Therefore nothing can exist separably from God. To create something means to cause for something to exist from scratch, this is not possible.

Rather, certain qualities of physical things, such as motion, contingency, and composition of spatial-temporal parts implies the existence of a First Mover and Supreme Architect.......

How?

In his critique of faith and revelation, Harris does make some telling points. If faith is understood as a blind stubbornness to a conviction, it is the kind of evil that he describes (which Bin Laden and Bush illustrate). And its ill effects are compounded when it is combined with what he and others call “fundamentalism,” i.e., the kind of rigid adherence to a text that we see among the Taliban, less sophisticated evangelicals, and others. Still, Harris has no understanding of traditional religion or mainstream theological thought (including mainstream conservative religious thought), so his whole book attacks a polemical straw man.

How, is is a strawman? It should be noted however, that Bush and Taliban are profoundly religious much like Hitler, Stalin, Jesus and Muhammad for reasons described above.

Likewise, Harris’ assumption that all religious believers are either fundamentalists or radical liberals is a grossly false dichotomy. .

A religious believer is one who scrupulously follows a set of dictates concerning epistemology, ethics and cosmology. Fundamentalism is the definition of such scrupulous adherence. Thus 'religious believer' and 'fundamentalist' are synonymous.

I do not know what radical liberalism has to do with religiosity.

But what value is an atheist book when the author knows neither the ideas nor the experiences of religious faith?.

It is all very easy to understand. Religious faith is a set of dictates concerning ethics, cosmology and eschatology. The many illusions people experience with regard to their emotional experience of religious faith is irrelevant to the essence of religious faith.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I'm a quiet agnostic. I tend to regard theist and atheist partisans with an equal amount of vexation over how much time and energy they are wasting. It can't be good to be spewing so much bile so much of the time.

I have doubts about the existence of God, but they constantly differ depending on how you define "God". One of the reasons I do not like religious discussion is that it rests so much on confusing terminology. That aside, I also tend to think it's very irrelevant.

There are arguments in that piece that agree with, and ones I disagree with. I do not care about how passionate and awe inspired the old atheists were. I do not believe there is much of a connection between religion and ethics, really. I do admit though that religion is just one of many fronts that people use to commit violence and supress knowledge, and it is unreasonable selectivism to put all or even most of the blame on religion. Indeed, class, ethnicity, race, culture, and the general want of resources are the main causes of war. Religion is just oil for the gears, and thing of political or sociological nature will suffice just as well if religion is not used. Criticizing faith in general is an a substantially less valid argument, since I could pin everyone of these atheists and scientists down to admitting that they make fundamental life decisions on faith all the time.

One of my complaints with a lot of the athiests out there, and notably here on this forum, is that they have a particular self-defeating inconsistency I'd like to point out. They have a tendency to deride religious people for being too conceited. They try to prove that this means the religions are overly-zealous, and self-absorbed to the point of being shut off from objective truth, the needs of others, and the possibility of being wrong. The problem here, is most of the athiests making these claims are just as conceited, in much the same way. So, if I were to take their premises and conclusion to be valid, it would require me to also reject the athiests as much as it would require me to reject the theists.

 

[SillySapienne]

I know what I am about to write is sheerly anecdotal evidence, but I do not feel like reading that snoringly boring wall of text, nor do I feel like engaging in an academic-style argument as to why your position as to why modern atheism is so shallow is absolutely hogwash.

So I will give you my two cents.

I know a buttload of SHALLOW theists whereas I do not know a buttload of shallow atheists.

Well, it is simply a question of numbers. MOST people are theists, and many people are shallow. It has been my experience that many of these shallow people so too shallowly wear their crosses and believe in their popular gods, well, because it is popular.

The few atheists that I do, (thankfully) know have been deep, why? Because they have actually had the cognitive inclination, strength and fortitude to question the status quo. And to look for answers not readily fed to them by the masses or by the mass media.

It is *EASY* and *EXPECTED* for people to believe in god, it is rare and quite noble when they don't, imo.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

I know what I am about to write is sheerly anecdotal evidence, but I do not feel like reading that snoringly boring wall of text, nor do I feel like engaging in an academic-style argument as to why your position as to why modern atheism is so shallow is absolutely hogwash.

You should probably make a point to read the whole thing before giving staunch rebuttals.

I know a buttload of SHALLOW theists whereas I do not know a buttload of shallow atheists.

As you said, anecdotal. Too anecdotal to amount to much. Too bad the odds broke that way for you.

Well, it is simply a question of numbers. MOST people are theists, and many people are shallow. It has been my experience that many of these shallow people so too shallowly wear their crosses and believe in their popular gods, well, because it is popular.

So, most people are shallow. Most people are theists. The frequency of the two linning up may be one huge coincidence. The coincidence is large, but very plausible. At best, you can only point out a correlation, which as the cliche goes, is not causation.

The few atheists that I do, (thankfully) know have been deep, why? Because they have actually had the cognitive inclination, strength and fortitude to question the status quo. And to look for answers not readily fed to them by the masses or by the mass media.

I've known a ton of shallow athiests. I have also spoken to thoughtful religious people, and one is in my current logic class, in fact. There's my anecdotal evidence.

Aside from it just being obvious that there are stupid atheists, you also continue to ignore the very deep thinking religious people of history, like Descartes. Perhaps a more amusing example would be Darwin. A lot of the people who made some of the biggest, supposedly religion refuting discoveries were actually believers themselves, who did not see why their own discoveries should be problematic.

It is *EASY* and *EXPECTED* for people to believe in god, it is rare and quite noble when they don't, imo.

It's easy to take whatever is given to you. If someone was raised by atheists in a town of mixed or secular beliefs, then it woud be easy for them to be athiests. It would be more surprising if they became religious. The point here is that it has little to do with the qualities of religious beliefs. You are merely talking about social conformity, regardless of what everyone is conforming around.

I'm not an atheist, but I am not a believer in God either. So, would you say that my choice is noble, or that I am deep?

 

[SillySapienne]

^They're all the paradigm of depth, fo' shizzle.

And believe you me, I can play this game all night.

Trying to find pics of shallow atheists, and gosh darnit, I am having difficulties doing so, hmm, wonder why?

 

[Magic Poriferan]

^They're all the paradigm of depth, fo' shizzle.

And believe you me, I can play this game all night.

Trying to find pics of shallow atheists, and gosh darnit, I am having difficulties doing so, hmm, wonder why?

That's very poor evidence and reasoning. You are picking out specifically stupid people that happen to be religious. It doesn't say anything of the average. There are so many different ways you could be intentionally and/or unintentionally failing to do that properly that I don't know where to begin.

Let's just say that matching words with picture of people, and then deciding if said people are stupid or smart, is not a sophisticated or reliable means of making an argument.

 

[SillySapienne]

Listen, I NEVER said that theists were shallow.

I do not think that theists are necessarily shallow.

I do, however, think that humanist atheists happen to also be incredibly deep.

I cannot provide evidence for this opinion, who can?!?!?!

How can one prove human depth or shallowness?!?!?