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ciphergothI'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.
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.
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Date: 2009-01-05 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 03:05 pm (UTC)At the moment it starts with a discussion of how easily people fool themselves, going into the empirical evidence; then it goes on to discuss what means we might employ to avoid fooling ourselves. That would leave 'till last specific discussion of the Emperors New Clothes effect, and the importance of not advancing an argument you don't yourself fully understand - eg don't say "We are finite, but God is infinite" unless you can say what you mean. Here I would want to talk about the idea of "getting there from here" - ie that you can start with observations about things on our own planet and our own scale in space and time, and get to eg quasars and electrons through a chain of reasoning that builds up more sophisticated and abstract phenomena.
At some point in that there would need to be a discussion of why you should care - about why it's better not to fool yourself, about how beliefs that seem harmless today can become harmful tomorrow, and that it's not a good idea to get practiced in pulling the wool over your own eyes. I'm not sure exactly how to write this part and I'm giving it quite a bit of thought - there's a connection with whether you really believe what you believe, and whether you allow it to affect your actions, but there's a chicken-and-egg problem in that I don't think I can convince that religion is hooey unless I can convince that it matters, but I don't see how to do the latter without doing the former either.
Anyway, then a discussion of the absolutely central role that obfuscation and confusion play in all defences of religion. After that I'd take a leaf out of the above book and discuss what atheism is and isn't, talk about agnosticism, and set out the complete incoherence of all attempts to discuss a god or gods, basically hammering home over and over again (with quotes) that religion says things that sound like they mean something, that make you feel as if you have been communicated with, without actually getting you anywhere.
There the intellectual case ends (perhaps modulo a short section on example arguments people make for religion and how the preceding section arms you to answer them) , but I'd want to go on to talk about eg the messed-up teachings of Jesus, and conclude that religion is what happens when a school of thought starts to become optimised entirely for memetic success through suppression of criticism - eg since the rewards and punishments happen off stage and no demonstration is needed, there is no reason not to turn the dials up to not eleven but infinity.
There also needs to be something answering the charge that the new atheists are too mean - I'm not sure where that goes.
It's unlikely to ever get beyond the stage of commenting about it on LJ, mind!