Times New Atheist

I've been following the dust-ups on the blogosphere around the various issues to do with 'New Atheists' and accommodationism, and trying to make some sense of it.

Recent 'anti-neo-atheists' include Terry Eagleton, Chris Mooney, Karen Armstrong, Madeleine Bunting and H.E. Baber. These include theists and 'faitheists'.

The targets of/responders to the attacks include Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers, Ophelia Benson and Russell Blackford.

The anti-neo-atheists seem a little taken aback by some of the responses to their criticism, and think the New Atheists are being a little thin-skinned, a little hypocritical; it's just the rough and tumble of debate - you dish it out, so don't complain when you get some criticism yourself.

This isn't quite the situation as I see it; the New Atheist complaint is not the criticism, per se, it's the *type* of criticism. The New Atheists are attacking accommodationism with various arguments that may or not be correct (I happen to be anti-accommodationist myself, so I agree with them). But the criticisms thrown at the New Atheists aren't about their arguments; they're about the actual act of criticism. Consider Chris Mooney's comments about Jerry Coyne; he's talking about what Barbara Forrest said about science v religion:

Coyne took on Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson, two scientists who reconcile science and religion in their own lives. Basically, Forrest’s point was that while Coyne may be right that there’s no good reason to believe in the supernatural, he’s very misguided about strategy.

And he goes on to give three reasons why atheists should not alienate religious moderates (a question-begging assertion itself): Etiquette, diversity and humility. An astonishing claim! In what other area of honest debate would these points be cited? The clarification for 'etiquette' simply places religious belief beyond criticism; 'diversity' argues that moderates shouldn't be argued out of existence as long as there are fundamentalists around, I think; 'humility' exhorts us to acknowledge our inability to disprove god. Well, one does, but does one have to *keep* acknowledging it?

So Mooney apparently agrees with Coyne's argument, but doesn't want him to press it home with moderate theists, in case they are alienated, and, er, what? Become fundamentalists, I guess. I cannot think of any other way to summarise Mooney's blog.

Now consider some quotes from H.E Baber's article in the Guardian:

Most people I know are atheists. But they're atheists of the old kind who have no particular interest in proselytising because they do not believe that anything of importance hangs on whether or not people believe in God and because they recognise that theological claims are controversial. Unlike the New Atheists they don't think they have discovered, or invented, something new and interesting.

A straight forward snide ad hom, and, of course, New Atheists don't think that anyway. From what I can deduce, they admire Hume, Russell and Mackie.

New Atheists believe in unbelief. For some reason they think it important to assure their followers in the village that religious belief is not merely false but uncontroversially false and that educated people who profess to be religious believers or claim that theism is compatible with science are out to dupe them.

Note the patronising 'in the village'; why can't the arguments be addressed in a grown-up manner? New Atheists *cannot* think that religious belief is *uncontroversially false* otherwise they wouldn't be applying so much time to arguing their case. They think that religious belief has not shown it is reasonable to think it true - at least the religions they are familiar with. It's possible there are true religious beliefs floating around somewhere.

I would be very interested in hearing why the New Atheists and their followers believe, with such manifest conviction, in unbelief.

So rather than address the anti-accommodationist argument, pretend the New Atheist 'believes in unbelief'. It's a real shame. One of my least favourite tactics - argument dodging.

For me the New Atheists attack on religion is more an attack on the religious way of thinking; their motives are to ensure that public policies are determined with full possession of the facts of each matter. Many religions have survived by privileging their dogma and punishing dissent. The motives of many religious leaders are, and have been, to maintain control over a constituency, and to direct public policies according to their dogma of choice. Now this may not, by chance, be a bad thing - they may have dogma that happens to be good. But if there is bad dogma it's difficult to change it through reason, because of the privileges and punishments which have developed to *protect* the dogma. So the very reason the religions have survived successfully is the reason we must deny them privilege in the public arena.

Anti-accommodationists point out that moderate theists subscribe to this *religious way of thinking* just as fundamentalists do. Thankfully the moderates don't make the errors that the fundamentalists do, and they should be applauded for that. I prefer a moderate to a fundamentalist. I'd encourage fundamentalists to be moderates and moderates to be agnostics, and so on. But too often the anti-neo-atheists cry wolf at atheists pointing out faulty thinking, as if we should not do it when the believer is 'moderate'. That is simply *not good enough*, and indefensible.

Finally, Jerry Coyne has 'coyned' (see what I did there) a new term for atheist-butters - 'faitheist'. More complaints of hypocrisy have flown from faitheists, suggesting that this is pejorative, in the same way as 'New Atheist' has been denounced as pejorative by the New Atheists. There may be an element of truth in this, but I *think* there is a clear difference. The purpose of 'New Atheist' seems to be to differentiate a certain type of modern, vocal atheist from those nice, 'umble atheists of the past, who knew their place - witness Habel's comment above "Unlike the New Atheists they don't think they have discovered, or invented, something new and interesting." There's an agenda, and it is to define the New Atheists as something they're not. 'Faitheist' actually defines the target group accurately; they are atheists who *do* demand respect for faith. Any pejorative in 'New Atheist' is based on a false attribution of what they think. If 'faitheist' becomes pejorative it will simply be because folk come to find atheists who demand respect for faith objectionable. At least, that is how it should be. If things turn out differently, I'll amend my view.

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Lois Rogers fails to apologise

Richard Dawkins was misrepresented shamefully in this article in The Sunday Times by Lois Rogers. He wrote to them saying:

The Editor
The Sunday Times
London

Sir

The duplicity of Lois Rogers' title, "Dawkins Sets up Kids' Camp to Groom Atheists" (Sunday Times, June 28th), is exceeded only by its Jesuitical opening line, "Give Richard Dawkins a child for a week's summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life." I had nothing to do with the setting up of Camp Quest, and it is not, in any sense whatever, inspired by me, or influenced by me. The British version, run by Samantha Stein with no help from me, follows the admirable American model founded some years ago by Edwin and Helen Kagin, of Kentucky.

Lois Rogers asked me for a quotation, and she thanked me warmly for the following: "Camp Quest encourages children to think for themselves, sceptically and rationally. There is no indoctrination, just encouragement to be open-minded, while having fun." Isn't that about as far from Jesuitical grooming as you could imagine? One of my dominant motivations, passionately expressed in The God Delusion, is an abhorrence of childhood indoctrination, of atheism just as much as of religion. It is in this spirit that the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has made very modest contributions to Camp Quest. Lois Rogers' traducing of both Camp Quest and me is, alas, par for the course for religiously motivated journalists. Fortunately, I am not the litigious type, but an apology would be nice.

Richard Dawkins
Oxford

They have now published this:

Your article Dawkins Sets Up Kids’ Camp to Groom Atheists(News, last week) begins with the Jesuitical opening line: “Give Richard Dawkins a child for a week’s summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life.” Camp Quest, is not inspired by me or influenced by me. The British version, run by Samantha Stein, follows the American model founded by Edwin and Helen Kagin, of Kentucky.

I gave the following quote to Lois Rogers: “Camp Quest encourages children to think for themselves, sceptically and rationally. There is no indoctrination, just encouragement to be open-minded, while having fun.” Isn’t that about as far from Jesuitical grooming as you could imagine? One of my dominant motivations is an abhorrence of childhood indoctrination, of atheism just as much as of religion. It is in this spirit that the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has made very modest contributions to Camp Quest.

Richard Dawkins
Oxford

I can't even highlight the redactions; it's been paraphrased and bowdlerised. And there's no apology from Lois Rogers. She is presumably happy with the errors in her report. If this is what passes for good practice in the British press, we are in trouble.

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How to Find God

Channel 4 screened the first of the series Revelations: How to Find God, which followed some agnostics embarking on the Alpha Course, Nicky Gumbel's well organised effort to convert the masses.

The excellent Jon Ronson was our guide, a suitably neutral commentary, but his slightly cynical voice tends to give away his sceptical outlook, I feel.

I found the course fascinating in its techniques and personnel. The methods are carefully worked out for the maximum effect; rousing speeches from friendly Tony Bliar style trendy vicars, with follow -up sessions in groups of eight or so, where bonding helps to draw the vulnerable in and break down the barriers of the cynical. It's noticeable how the agnostics quicly grew to feel empathy for their Christian group leaders - almost *protective* of them. And certainly in this case the two group leaders seemed like thoroughly decent types, despite their delusion; what wasn't to like about them?

They were incredibly sensitive about their belief, however, highlighted after the male Christian explained a time when he thought god was talking to him (on a bus, apparently) when one of the group innocently asked how he knew the voice in his head was god and not just a voice in his head. A not unreasonable question. The female Christian leapt to his defence (they were married, I think) and said they were *patronising* him, and that he wasn't stupid - she was quite irate! But they weren't patronising him, or calling him stupid, but asking him a genuine question, that deserves an answer. I've written before how it would be impossible in practice, I think, to differentiate between god speaking to you in your head, and having a brainstorm and *thinking* that god is speaking to you in your head. So, not stupid, just vulnerable, from that point of view.

It seemed to me that everyone involved from Alpha was well-intentioned and hard-working; I would congratulate them on that and would be loathe to assign any nefarious motives to them, certainly at grass-roots level; they honestly believed they were doing people a favour. Even the agnostics who were no nearer god after the course found them admirable people.

This is one of the tragedies for me, because plenty of religions attract these otherwise wonderful members of the community to work for them. But I think they would be wonderful people without their religious convictions, and that the dogma for which they fall just distracts them from benefitting the community even more.

At the end, there seemed to be only one member of the group much closer to god than before, but I guess that's better than nothing, for their purposes. Interestingly, one or two members seemed quite favourable to the Alpha ideas until the 'speaking in tongues' session; maybe this is a step too far for many introverted Brits!

I did watch a Nicky Gumbel video where he laid out the *evidence* for faith in Christianity. It wasn't too good! Here's a summary:

Creation itself; hmmm, can't see anything about that to compel me to Christianity. We don't know exactly how the universe came about yet, possibly never will; And philosophers down the ages have pondered the question long and hard without coming to a consensus.

Fine tuning; again, nothing Christian about that. Did Christ mention it in the Sermon on the Mount? Not that I recall. I've seen good cases made for it being an argument *against* a god. So, not a convincing one.

Humans have a god-shaped vacuum in them! Nice one; might be true, I suppose, since most (all?) societies create their own gods. Nothing Christian about it though. Perhaps this god-shaped hole is telling us something about humans, and nothing about the truth or otherwise of a deity?

Finally he gets onto Christianity and says there is 'massive evidence' for Jesus Christ. That's a little economical with the truth, I think. We have two references in Roman histories, of dubious provenance, and then the NT. It's true that we cannot dismiss the whole of the history of the Christian Church - we need to consider that as *some* evidence. But there are many holy men giving rise to various churches down the years, so what is it about JC that means we must believe in him?

Other evidence (he's beginning to waffle a bit now), transformed lives. I've heard of many transformed lives from non Christian religions, so this can be dismissed out of hand. Nazism transformed a few lives too.

The Church Itself! It's not like there's other churches, is it!

So the Alpha Course has no *good* evidence, after all. Nevertheless, an enjoyable program, and interesting to see how they operate.

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Modern Morals

A brief comment on this article by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in The Times. He claims we have come to believe there is no right and wrong, and cites the recent MP expense scandal:

In the case of MPs and financial institutions whole groups of people were, in effect, saying: “It’s legal, therefore it’s moral. Besides which, everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I?” This was not a failure of individuals but of an entire culture, whose air we all breathe, and for which all of us share responsibility.

The failure of these groups certainly tells us something about the society they move in, but I've also been encouraged by the reaction, which contradicts Sacks's point; almost everyone has been disgusted by the behaviour of the great and the good. That to me is a sign that the general public do clearly know the difference between right and wrong; I also believe the people involved mostly know the difference. Moral law is not binding like physical law; people can break them whilst knowing what's right or wrong. He goes on:

So, in place of an inner code, we have regulatory authorities. Where once people believed that God sees all we do, now we have CCTV and video surveillance. When self-imposed restraint disappears, external constraint must take its place. The result is that we have created the most regulated, intrusive society ever known.

and

An inner-directed society is one where people have an internalised sense of right and wrong. An other-directed society is one in which people take their cues from what other people do. Only in the latter can you have a situation in which people say: “If everyone else is doing it, it can’t be wrong.”

He seems to be arguing against an absolute morality here - an odd position for a theist. But he also seems to have a rather utopian bent. Whilst morality has been negotiated anew with each generation, and the moral zeitgeist has been re-established, all civilised society is characterised by law-making that recognises much of the ruling morality. This is a tacit admission that these laws aren't enshrined anywhere else, and require human enforcement.

The second was the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, who argued that morality had become incoherent because we had lost the foundation on which it was built. Words like obligation and ought belonged to a culture in which people believed that there was such a thing as a divine law: the belief shared by Jews, the Greek Stoics and Christians. Lose this and the words themselves lose their meaning. It is, she said, as if the word criminal remained when the criminal law had been abolished and forgotten.

This strikes me as nonsense; no-one has ever established how a divine law gives our human morality a 'foundation'. It's simple assertion; one could just as well ask what gives divine law its foundation? Introducing the god concept is just not helpful.

If this is true, we face a much larger crisis than we think. Parliamentary reform and financial re-regulation will treat the symptoms not the cause. Without conscience there can be no trust. Without a shared moral code there can be no free society. Either we recover the moral sense or we will find, too late, that in the name of liberty, we have lost our freedom.

This I can agree with. But as always it's the secular that will give us access to a shared moral code that can work; if we look to the multifarious religious codes available, we must fail - they are incompatible with each other.

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An Agnostic's Apology

I recently read An Agnostic's Apology, by Leslie Stephen, which presents a splendid analysis of why a reasonable person should be agnostic. To be agnostic is also to be atheist, of course, so I tend to use the terms interchangeably.

Towards the end he says:

Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only by incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness.

I've often written along similar lines myself, only a lot less elegantly :-).

I've been trying to analyse the concept of doubt in recent blog posts, and how that relates to faith. Certainly some theists admit to some doubt, although many don't, and *my* interpretation of faith is one of banishing doubt and committing to an unjustified belief. Others claim they have access to some universal 'truth'.

The splendid last paragraph of Stephen's 1893 essay says, in response to the convictionalist challenge to "Stick to the words which profess to explain everything; call your doubts mysteries, and they won't disturb you any longer; and believe in those necessary truths of which no two philosophers have ever succeeded in giving the same version."

Gentlemen, we can only reply, wait till you have some show of agreement amongst yourselves. Wait till you can give some answer not palpably a verbal answer, to some one of the doubts which oppress us as they oppress you. Wait till you can point to some single truth, however trifling, which has been discovered by your method, and will stand the test of discussion and verification. Wait till you can appeal to reason without in the same breath vilifying reason. Wait till your Divine revelations have something more to reveal than the hope that the hideous doubts which they suggest may possibly be without foundation. Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance. And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon by your own bluster.

This could have been written today in response to the Stanley Fishes and Terry Eagletons of this world.

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Anti-Censorship Post

In the interests of free speech, I'm mirroring this video by DonExodus2 that was pulled down due to a DMCA complaint on Youtube. See this article at Pharyngula for details.

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Alister McGrath's System of Belief

A common accusation levelled at the faithless is that they are just as much prisoners of faith as the 'faithful'; this charge can come from believers and the patronising non-believer 'post-modern' type of thinker alike. There's a good reason for doing this - it's to allow the apologist to create a straw man for them to attack in contrast to their own worldview. The unpalatable alternative is that they must positively defend the truth of their worldview; which is often indefensible. So it's a *deflection* strategy, when one has run out of arguments, and a tu quoque fallacy to boot.

A good example is this article, in The Times, by Alister McGrath, a softly spoken master of the non-statement. He starts by comparing the anti-apartheid ANC to atheism, pointing out the difficulties the ANC is having to create a *positive* identity for itself. He then cites Christopher Hitchens' work, and then says of his argument:

It locates the virtues of atheism firmly in the alleged outrages of religious believers.

That may be, but this is just one minor argument in favour of atheism. He goes on to point out that Christianity offers a transformation to the human situation, overcoming the fear of death and a 'pervasive sense of hopelessness in the face of human mortality and transciency'. Once again, this may well be true for some, but doesn't speak to the *truth* of the proposition. A more rational approach would be to understand the nature of human transciency and *embrace* it, and *revel* in it. It's our very transciency that gives our brief flicker its value, is it not? Theists want to *deny* us our humanity and replace it with a curious, ego-boosting, god-like, *immortal* state of being. And the key word there is *want*, because they cannot justify it in any other way.

McGrath's task in this article appears to be to cast *non-belief* as *belief*. But there's a twist; he *discredits* belief:

The demand that we limit ourselves to the logically and scientifically certain sounds reasonable until we realise the limits of both logic and science. Beliefs that we cannot prove to be true are part of the fabric of our lives, whether we are religious, secular or indifferent.

True, we all have beliefs we can't prove; but then 'proof' is an unattainable objective outside of maths and logic.  As with many apologists, McGrath doesn't see any difference between something which cannot be *proved*, and something for which there is *insufficient evidence*, because he doesn't approve of *non-belief*. Witness:

For example, Christians believe in God; the “New Atheists” believe that there is no God to believe in.

He cannot even write the line 'the “New Atheists” don't believe that there is a God'. This True/False boolean approach to belief is superficially attractive to many but doesn't acknowledge our knowledge or ignorance. Every proposition we are exposed to is weighed on the evidence presented, and when there is no evidence, we are naturally uncommitted - the Null position compared to True and False. When there is lots of evidence we are usually in a position to commit to True or False. For example, there is lots of evidence that we live in a heliocentric solar system. I would have difficulty *proving* this to you, but there is a mountain of evidence to this effect. It is *reasonable* to adopt the position.

Atheists don't adopt the *theist* position because the evidence presented for it is thin or contradictory. The worldviews of most theists are incoherent and redundant. It is quite difficult for an atheist to say they believe there are no gods (although some do) because it is an *absolutist* statement normally reserved for the all-knowing theists. I, personally, would always resist it for this reason, but I'm happy to say that I believe that all of the god stories so far presented to me are false. There may be a convincing story round the corner, but theism's *coherence* has yet to be established, so I will look again when a coherent story *is* presented. And just to be clear, for such a remarkable explanation of the human condition to be acceptable, the nature of any god and his workings need to be understandable. If anyone wants me to be believe something that is, by definition, inexplicable then they'll be wasting their time. 

McGrath quotes the rationally-challenged Terry Eagleton:

“We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain.”

So what? 'Reasonable to entertain' is completely different from 'reasonable to accept', and *that* is what theists harangue the rest of us to do. McGrath sums up:

All of us want to celebrate our beliefs. Yet can we do this without condemning the beliefs of others? It is an important question in contemporary Britain. The threat of social fragmentation is easily worsened if interest groups, secular or religious, lash out against others when justifying themselves. A rhetoric of dismissal and ridicule plays well to a populist gallery. Yet a robust civil society is fostered by a culture of respect and civility rather than derision and censure. Neither of these civic virtues seems to be much in evidence at the moment.

But the condemnation of the beliefs of others is *written in* to his credo, and many other theisms. Atheists merely point out the problems in his belief, and yet *we* are the ones condemned by *him* for pointing out the Emperor is naked, and further condemned by his church to an eternity in hell. A little ridicule and derision for such hypocrisy is surely in order.

Everone has a worldview they think is most in tune with reality. It is only the dogmatic who look to *punish* others for not conforming to their worldview, so one may ask why McGrath clings to a *dogmatic* worldview among the many available.

Consider this quote from the Sunday Times:

“Who are these British?” he asked. “Just western unbelievers. Islam tells us not to have any links with unbelievers. That is why this man [Dyer] will be executed in the name of God.” - Abel Hamid Abu Zeid, Algerian militant

Rather than railing against harmless non-believers, I think McGrath's time would be better spent wondering what it was about this theist's worldview that drove him to commit the murder of an innocent tourist in his god's name.

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