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]

What makes you think you need to know anything about either philosophy or tailoring to say "you clearly don't know enough to see it"? Not that she doesn't know a great deal about the subject, but you really shouldn't let it impress you that she says it, and frankly it says a lot about the problems with how you think about this that you do.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

I think what my original comment really was was a throwaway remark on how nice it was to see someone from Our Lot arguing about this with you on your level, because in this particular area I am simply not educated enough to be able to do that¹. Which is why our arguments on the issue have occasionally ended with me flailing my hands, wailing 'butbutbut you're WRONG!' and bursting into tears, which quite rightly puts me in the losing position [grin]

¹I can't believe I actually just said that. Don't let it go to your head too much ;-)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't get too impressed with that either. Most of the more sophisticated apologetics in religion work this way: find a tricky area of philosophy that's really hard to reason about properly, propose God as a solution. You haven't actually solved anything, but now it's *so* hard to reason about that even seeing that you haven't solved anything can be hard, but the result is that the debates sound terribly sophisticated and so it can seem that there's a reasonable case for both sides. There isn't; the King is still in the altogether.

[djm4]

Most of the more sophisticated apologetics in religion work this way: find a tricky area of philosophy that's really hard to reason about properly, propose God as a solution.

Just to clarify: is that what you think lizw is doing here? Because I'm not getting that at all from what she's writing, although I suppose your responses to her (and to me) might make a bit more sense in that context.

[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.

[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?

[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...

[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]

No, we ended up talking about the unjustifiability of induction because I thought your position depended on it!

I think my position probably depends on induction being justifiable, along with other beliefs that are equally foundational!

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?

I think you're probably misremembering my responses to the GP objection. I can recall making two in different discussions. One is that it (and FSM, invisible unicorn and other similar objections) rely on a metaphor which wrongly predisposes people to think of "God" as referring to an entity in space and time and therefore leads to a category error when considering what counts as justification for the belief in God's existence. The other is along the lines of "show me someone who genuinely has the existence of the FSM/GP/invisible unicorn as their most fundamental perception, and I'll probably concede that they are justified in believing in it", which is obviously more flippant because I doubt that such people exist, but still probably true.

[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.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

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

[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]

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.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

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 know, but you're not trying to convince me - I'm trying to convince you :-)

such as "other minds exist" and "external objects exist" interesting! Neither of those are foundational problems to me - I think solipsism and belief in zombies are both meaningless stances.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I know, but you're not trying to convince me - I'm trying to convince you :-)

Of course I'm trying to convince you - not that God exists, but that I'm justified in believing that he does, which is not the same proposition.

Neither of those are foundational problems to me - I think solipsism and belief in zombies are both meaningless stances.

"A is not a foundational belief" does not follow from "not-A is meaningless"; in fact, I think there may be a good argument that "not-A is meaningless" is practically a sufficient condition for "A is a foundational belief", at least for certain values of A.

[djm4]

such as "other minds exist"

It may or may not be relevant, but when we were discussing this offline the other day, you made a convincing case for those being a different type of axiom problem from the principle of induction. The principle of induction (as I think we all in fact agree) is inherently self-referential and any attempt to justify it assumes that it's true. (Whether or not that makes it inherently unjustifiable depends on one's definition of 'justifable', but that it, I think, a separate issue).

That's not true of the others, so I suspect that ciphergoth may not have the same problem with them.

[djm4]

*sees thread above*

Ah. Ignore me, I see you're both ahead of me on this one.

[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.

[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.