George H Smith, "Atheism: The Case Against God"

[ciphergoth]

I've read all four of the recent books by the "four horsemen", and for the most part none have made me feel "yes, this is the book I want to press into the hands of believers". I would like there to be at least one book that I might be able to recommend, and having heard good things about this 1974 book, I ordered it from Amazon on a whim.

It certainly comes a *lot* closer than any of those four. It has a very dry style; there are no witty personal stories, few anecdotes, and only a smattering of historical background. But all four of the horsemen books seem somewhat scattershot in their approach, except perhaps Dennett, whose book seems like not so much an attack on religion as a hastily-repurposed discussion of religion originally intended for an atheist audience. This book is much more bulldozer than scattershot, and methodically dismantles the "sophisticated" defences of religion I actually hear from believers.

Its bulldozer-like nature may be seen in its chapter structure; first, clarify what atheism is and establish that the burden of proof lies with the theist; then tear down obfuscation as a means to confound rational discussion of the issue; demolish the idea that faith and revelation can supplement reason as guides to the truth (discussing and destroying a variety of attempts to defend the idea of faith). Only then are the traditional arguments for the existence of God, such as the cosmological argument, painstakingly taken apart; and only after that are the negative moral consequences of religion discussed.

There are a few problems. Smith is (or at least was) an Objectivist, and this leads to some sad errors; his defence of the idea of moral facts in Chapter 11 Section 2, for example, is just embarrassing. And it seems a shame to discuss the argument from design without even mentioning evolution; I can see that as a philosopher you want to show that the argument is *inherently* flawed, and of course it is, but it's evolution that robs it of its emotional impact. I still find myself thinking that I may have to write my ultimate book on the subject, but I have quite a few other books I'd have to read first to know if there was a gap in the market, and I can't afford quite that many whims :-)

No argument, no matter how good, can turn the head of someone who is prepared to say in terms that they intend to cling to an idea no matter how much they have to embrace irrationality in order to do so, as many sophisticated believers openly say. But still, when I read the four horsemen books, I felt I knew how believers were going to evade the conclusions they were pushing for, and I would love to know how a serious, philosophically knowledgable believer would go about avoiding the conclusions of this book.



Update: as usual, anonymous comments should be signed to be unscreened.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I had thought so; it now looks as if it isn't a complete fit for that description but it's in closely related territory.

[djm4]

And ... just reassure me. That isn't what you're doing by continuing to raise the circularity of the principle of induction, is it?

Because I was, honestly, trying to discuss that one in good faith, while not being entirely sure why you thought it was relevant. And I'm happy to continue to do so. But it strikes me, in the light of what you believed lizw to be doing, that you might have been trying an analogous tactic right back at me, with the aim of making the argument seem so complex that I either gave up and dropped it, or assumed you'd thought more about the subject than I had and deferred to you.

I realise that this is a slightly unpleasant thing to be accused of, but if it's a debating tactic that you thought (and presumably still think) lizw capable of, I don't think it's too outrageous for me to ask whether it's one you might employ yourself.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, but don't worry :-) This is a bit imprecise but I'm rushed...

I thought that lizw was making an argument a little like C S Lewis or Plantinga's argument, which both (very, very roughly) start by talking about how certain beliefs resist normal justification and so we can argue that belief in God is as valid as those beliefs.

So the fact that we can't justify the principle of induction through experience is key to that argument, and I couldn't understand how the argument worked without it - I think of a belief justified by experience as a whole different category of belief. I really hadn't expected that anyone would disagree that the principle of induction is in principle unjustifiable, I thought that was a fairly uncontroversial bit of philosophy and in fact one that lizw's arguments depended on.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

And for the avoidance of doubt, I of course think that lizw is arguing in good faith. I don't think any of these arguments are advanced in bad faith.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

This is a bit late, but there are two things that don't seem to be addressed by the argument in the book (as you summarize it) and haven't come up in the comments as far as I can see.

First, I'm uncomfortable with requiring logical consistency in definitions on this topic, because I'm personally familiar with two independent lines of theological reasoning (Taoism and Jewish kabbalism) that claim that as finite beings, any definition we can put forward for "god" is necessarily incomplete and inconsistent. How much does the book's argument depend on the notion that we need to be able to define this term in a logically consistent manner, and why does he take this position in the first place?

Second, and this might not be addressed in the book at all, but I would like to raise the issue of direct subjective experience of the supernatural (not necessarily of "god"). A lot of modern philosophical debate of atheism .vs. theism (from both sides, AFAICT) takes it as an axiom that this just doesn't happen, but I think if you asked a random sample of "ordinary" believers you would get a substantial number of them saying yes, I have personally experienced something for which my only available explanation is supernatural. [This is not to say that there might not be a wholly natural explanation available to e.g. someone with more knowledge of the workings of the brain; only that a supernatural explanation is the only one the questionee's got.]

I raise this because it seems to me that as long as argument from the atheistic side dismisses all such experience in terms like "well, of course there is a natural explanation, you're just not edumacated enough to know it, and we're not going to consider it any further" they're not going to get anywhere. In fact, I would imagine that that would be a hurl-book-with-great-force moment for anyone who's had such an experience.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

You should clearly read this book - it is exactly the book I'd recommend for both these questions, this is just the sort of thing it discusses at length.

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

To elaborate some more, I don't think that errors in reasoning are a cornerstone of religion in the present day. Sure, there are some: Creationism, the belief that the earth and humans are important, the illusion of the soul, fantasies regarding the start and end of life, prayer as a placebo, ascribing "evil" where "indifferent" or "unfortunate" are accurate, and so on.

These are definitely traps of reasoning that people fall into, one could do well to debunk them. One could also do well do debunk lesser superstitions such as horoscopes or divination, as well as to expose the practices of purely cynical exploitative organizations, such as the scientology. These definitely should be treated as mistakes or scams.

But if you ask me what kind of beliefs are the cornerstone of Christian religion, I think they are mostly political ones: Patriarchy, submission to a group, righteous intolerance, unquestioned obedience to authority, a culture of adulation (what Hitchens calls "the wish to be a serf"), surrendering of privacy, or an understanding of morals as externally imposed rather than emergent.

These aren't errors, or at least they aren't straightforward logical potholes that people fall into. They are framing issues, where people see the world though a certain set of religious-authoritarian frames, we think this is kind of unfortunate for them and dangerous for others, and we'd like them to swap them for humanist-tolerant frames.

All I'm trying to say here is it isn't just a simple mistake where you show them the right frames and they go "aha!". Well, some might do, but mostly it's a memetic process. You have to point out the bad frames to make them visible, offer the superior alternatives, and hope that by doing this time after time some success will result.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I'll try to find it, but that is very much not what I understood you to be saying. In particular, you said (not in the main text, I guess):

He demonstrates very well that no coherent meaning can be applied to the word "god"...and that this is enough to rule it out with no further consideration.

I understand that to mean Smith takes as axiomatic that there can be no useful discussion of any concept of divinity unless it has a fully consistent meaning. But Taoism (for instance) takes as axiomatic that there is no such thing. These are irreconcilable axioms, so either that's an inaccurate representation of his argument or his argument cannot be applied to that type of theological tradition.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

He doesn't take it as axiomatic; he explicitly tackles what you're discussing. I'm amazed at the delight believers show in repeating things that by their own free admission they don't understand, but I'm afraid I'm not going to get into it here as I have enough debates going on and I feel the book answers it well enough.

[djm4]

I'm amazed at the delight believers show in repeating things that by their own free admission they don't understand...

This is probably going to sound snarky, but I don't mean it that way - I'm trying to puzzle out a distinction that I know exists in your head but which I don't fully understand. You say, above, of the principle of induction:

"I don't base my use of it on anything, I just use it, which is why I call it an axiom"

If I've elided key context there, I'm sorry - although I think it's worth noting that the context I take for the remark is as a direct comparison to my assertion that I use the principle of induction because of my experience that it works.

You also say 'the principle of induction is in principle unjustifiable', and claim this as a reasonably uncontroversial philosophical statement. (It's worth noting for context here that as far as I can tell you're using 'justifiable' in the (to me) fairly strong sense of 'provable', and that by that definition of 'justifiable', I agree.)

Unless I'm much mistaken, the principle of induction underpins pretty much everything that you, or I, would term reasoning. So you are using, for all your reasoning, a tool that you don't have any evidence-based reason for using but 'just use', and believe that there's no justification for.

I'm honestly not criticising yor for doing this. My own view of the principle of induction is, I think, fairly close to this (I'll reply on the other thread, but don't have time now), and my views on free will and consciousness also rather similar (if anything, they're odder, because I act and reason 'as if' free will were real, without believing that it is).

However, I would have thought that the views were at least similar enough in nature to someone 'repeating things that by their own free admission they don't understand' that you wouldn't find it that amazing.

Edit - just to reiterate what I said at the start, I'm fairly certain that you don't see the two positions as at all similar, and I wonder if you've got any way of explaining to me why. I realise that it may be as simple as you saying: 'no, I can't see why you think they're at all alike, so I don't know where to start', and if that's the answer, that's fine.

[babysimon]

In fact, I would imagine that that would be a hurl-book-with-great-force moment for anyone who's had such an experience.

I have had such an experience, and I'm an atheist...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I can't justify the principle of induction, but I do think I understand it.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I can't immediately think of any general philosophical problem to which I think God is the solution.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I think what's probably going on here is that we mean something different by justification. Do you have a definition that explains what counts as justification for you?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'm a Christian and don't share any of the political beliefs you list.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

You seem to be saying that you dont understand what L is saying but you are glad she is giving P a kicking? You religious people are very strange.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Also, you seem to be assuming that if you (or anyone else)just got educated enough you would be able to a) prove that god exists b) prove to P that god exists. Which, er, no and no.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, not an area of philosophy I've ever got into, it sounds hard :-) I might have a read of the Wikipedia article and see if I can identify a position that sounds like where I'm coming from, but I'm not sure that helps.

It's not obvious to me that this is where our difference lies, but that's not to say it isn't so...

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

Great but I don't know what you do believe, other than you have some vague mystical experience. Have you already summarized your beliefs in a place I could read?

You seem to be saying "I belong in group X but don't share their commonly evidenced beliefs". One can hear this also from a Communist, Nationalist, or Neo-Liberal. In other words I identify in group X but refuse the accusation that I share the group's negative characteristics. Since we're discussing the group, and not your identity, I find that line of argument somewhat meaningless.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't think I've been trying to do either of those in this thread! I don't believe that's possible, education or no education.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought you were trying to establish foundations for thinking based on the existence of God, but it doesn't look that way now. It still seems like there's some relationship between foundational philosophical problems and what you're saying about belief here, but I'm having a hard time figuring that relationship out.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've ever written a summary of how my religious beliefs connect to my political ones, but the latter are reasonably well summed up in the Preamble to the Lib Dem constitution, which is broadly why I am a member of that party.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is quite hard - it took me about fifteen years to work out a position I'm comfortable defending in general terms, and several years after that I still don't have all the details tied down - but I think it's well worthwhile. Given the apparent strength of your conviction that induction is unjustifiable and the fact that the nature of induction seems to be key to your argument, getting a clear understanding of what you think counts as justification seems like a good move :-) Of the positions linked from that article, I probably agree most with foundationalism, but I think reformed epistemology has a point with its criticism that classical foundationalism has too narrow a set of criteria for what can count as a properly basic belief (while disagreeing with reformed epistemology on a lot of its other points, including its response to the Great Pumpkin Objection, which is basically the FSM under a different name AFAICS.) I don't pretend to have all the details tied down myself yet either, though.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, we ended up talking about the unjustifiability of induction because I thought your position depended on it! I thought I was bringing up a well-known and uncontroversial bit of philosophy in order to see if your position on God was similar to my position on induction, but it caused more confusion than it cleared up.

I'm at work, so forgive me if I'm imprecise here but let me try another tack to clarify your position. On a first reading, it seems as if you want to have it both ways with regard to evidence; your beliefs about God are not just a conclusion you've reached after examining the evidence available to you, and therefore subject to reasonable debate like any other evidential conclusion, but (I think) it's evidence you cite in response to the GP objection. What am I getting wrong here?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I wasn't trying to establish foundations for thinking based on the existence of God at all. I'm familiar with that line of argument, but it doesn't convince me, and I certainly wouldn't expect it to convince an atheist.

I'm also unclear as to why you think I would be trying to use it in this argument, given that the question we were discussing was almost exactly the inverse: our question hasn't been "given that God exists, how can we rationally establish foundations for thinking?", but "given what we count as rational foundations for thinking, is it reasonable for Liz to believe that God exists?" I was arguing that the justification I have for believing that God exists is of the same kind as the justification that is available for other foundational philosophical beliefs, such as "other minds exist" and "external objects exist"; so if people can be justified in believing those things, then I am justified in believing that God exists. Given what you say about induction, maybe you'd be content to concede that no-one has justification for those beliefs; if that's the case, then I think we've hit on a more fundamental philosophical difference between us than belief in God, and I'd probably be content to agree to disagree on it for the time being.