Authored by: Machen.

Submitted on behalf of Corum Seth Smith.

A Review of the “New” Atheism

Within the scope of this work, the “new” atheism will be considered.  First of all, it will be necessary to consider what the new atheism is, and how it is a specific representative of the atheist worldview.  Second, some of the important philosophical presuppositions within the new atheism will be considered and clarified.  It is my contention that the new atheism is really a second or third generation form of logical positivism, or scientism, two points of view that are closely connected.  In my third and final portion of this work, I will consider the implications of such a view and even suggest some of the potential weaknesses or contradictions that might ensue.

I.  Atheism in general and the particular form of atheism in question

While it seems a given as to what atheism actually means, one must carefully consider that in any worldview or philosophy, there are variations.  Not only that, but there are often different attitudes and personalities within a worldview.  While many critics of theism within this camp are quite pleased to lump all theistic activity within one ubiquitous whole, one should not respond in kind, no matter how tempting.  This is a logical fallacy of hastily generalizing a worldview and can often lead to posting it up as an easily defeated “straw man.”  Atheists pose serious questions which need to be addressed; and there is no possible way to address all these questions and inquiries within one brief work. As a result, I would like to distinguish between general, or basic, atheism, and what is called the “new” atheism.

I-A. Basic atheism

Most people readily understand the definition of the word “atheist.”  It is commonly understood as “one who does not believe in God.”  Coming from Greek meaning “without God,” this is the general, and correct, understanding, of the term.  For example, Douglas Krueger, author of “What is Atheism? A Short Introduction” defines atheism concisely:  “Atheism is the belief that there are no gods.  It’s that simple (24).”[1]

However, before Krueger defines basic atheism, he makes an important claim in his unfolding introduction to atheism.  He makes the assertion that atheism cannot be simplified to one viewpoint.  Krueger claims “Atheism itself is not a worldview, it is not a philosophy of life.  It is an important part of a larger view, but atheism alone is not supposed to be a comprehensive philosophy of life.”[2] So atheism, as defined by its own adherents, is only part of a larger philosophy of life.  While on some level this seems to be a bit convenient, as an atheist can adjust their viewpoint ex post facto, it also leaves itself open to a criticism that atheism inevitably leads to some form of existentialism where life’s meaning is both utterly and ultimately defined by the individual.  I will address these implications later in the third section.

For now, let us take this statement and uphold it, and see what may result.  If there are different forms of atheism, then it is, as I said earlier, impossible to address all of the various forms in a short work.  It is fair to say that there are typically four philosophical motifs that reassert themselves periodically throughout the main body of atheist literature, such as existentialism, scientism, utopianism and some form of nihilism.[3] However, there is philosophical diversity within the broader perspective of atheism.  For instance, Nietzsche could be identified with existentialism and nihilism, but not necessarily with scientism or utopianism.   So for now, I would like to address one strand of atheism that has asserted itself in several circles, from professional academics to curious intellectuals who purchase reading materials from Amazon.com and other commercial enterprises.  That is the “new atheism.”

II. What is the “New” Atheism?

The new atheism has some defining characteristics.  First of all, there are four authors who are its most vociferous proponents:  Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris.  These four authors are the most frequently recurring names in the literature of responding theists ranging from the extremely conservative to extremely liberal; thus they are the four who will be considered in this work.  There are other atheist authors and thinkers who may be sympathetic, or even in complete accord with the thought of the aforementioned.  The two that are focused upon in this review are Dawkins and Harris.[4] However, these are the names that keep popping up in the greater dialectic between various theists and the next generation of atheistic thinkers.[5]

So if these are the representatives of the new atheism, what are they advocating?  What are some of the common characteristics of the new atheism?  Is it presumptuous, given Krueger’s insistence that atheism is not a worldview in itself, to look for repeating ideas or themes in the books?  Does atheism have any kind of nucleus?  Actually, while reading the work of the new atheism’s representatives, there are overarching or similar concepts seen in the four authors.  Common truth claims, attitudes, and pleas for certain changes appear in all of these author’s books.  That is one main reason many observers, and not only theists, do regard this group as representative of a “new” atheism.[6] This new atheism, however, must be primarily understood not as people making claims that are radically different from those of their atheist predecessors, although there are some disconnects.  New atheism is new atheism primarily because it is the atheism of our current generation and now is the time in which theists must respond.  At any rate, what are some of the important, defining characteristics of the new atheism?

The first characteristic of new atheism that seems to be its predominant quality is its appeal to science as the only meaningful source of knowledge.  Consider this excerpt from Sam Harris:

Is a person really free to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence?  No.  Evidence (whether sensory or logical) is the only thing that suggests a given belief is really about the world in the first place.  We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification.  When their beliefs are extremely common we call them “religious”; otherwise they are likely to be called “mad,” “psychotic,” or “delusional” (71-2).[7]

Unfortunately, to get to the essential argument made by Harris, Dawkins, and the new atheists, one must sidestep a good bit of vitriol and intellectual elitism.  However in this excerpt, Harris is mostly being clear about his philosophical view without being too hurtful.  There are numerous responses to be made here, but I believe it is important to identify a premise that is implicitly affirmed in the new atheism.  The deeper presupposition made here is that anything cannot be meaningful as a statement if it cannot be empirically observed and tested.  Science and reasoning are often considered equivalent in this new atheism.  Science is the decided contemporary venue of reason. Therefore, that which cannot be examined or understood in scientific terms is nonsense, or the product of a delusional mind.  In the works of Harris and others, this epistemic view is the prevalent, if not exclusive one.

In fact, Dawkins and many of the other new atheists suggest that God be treated as a hypothesis.  The underlying logic is that anything that can or should be of value to the human race is that which can be tested scientifically.  A hypothesis is an idea which can be verified or falsified with repeated empirical analysis.[8] Does the God of a theist fit into so tight and compartmentalized a space?  Regardless of the view taken of this question, the new atheists claim that God is one among many hypotheses.  Additionally, they claim that they follow in the footsteps of Laplace who suggest that the hypothesis is unnecessary.[9] Indeed, the hypothesis of God is now defunct in the new atheist view.  Where we came from and how there is something rather than nothing is no longer a mystery whatsoever. Dawkins claims that the issue is finally solved:

This book is written in the conviction that our own existence one presented the greatest of all mysteries, but that it is a mystery no longer because it is solved.  Darwin and Wallace solved it, though we shall continue to add footnotes to their solution for a while yet. (Preface, ix.)[10]

If we were indeed to concede that the said convictions were true, think of the implications.  First of all, there would be no more need for any significant subsequent scientific speculation, only footnotes to Darwin.[11] Second, scientists would supplant the role of philosophers and theologians as arbiters of ultimate meaning.  This is precisely the aim of the new atheists.  Their aim is the end of faith (the title of Sam Harris’s first major work), and the beginning of a second wave of enlightenment identifiable by a society that totally embraces one particular scientific hypothesis.  Third, however, is that the scientific method would eliminate all others in the course of human knowledge and belief.  For example, Dawkins deeply criticizes prayer as a meaningful and important human experience throughout his work.  He also reserves some harsh words for philosophy.  However, that criticism is secondary to the underlying philosophical assumption that gives it impetus, namely that science and science alone shall pave the way forward.  Never mind that science, if we consider the warnings of many, shall always be an open-ended and unfinished endeavor.[12] Also never mind that science itself is an academic discipline prone to its own philosophical biases and political in-fighting. For Dawkins this is either irrelevant or an untrue depiction of actual science.  While Harris technically does not yield to the scientific reductionism that is more prevalent in Dawkins, he nonetheless seems to be very enamored by it.[13]

Another contemporary of the new atheists who treat God like a hypothesis is Victor Stenger, author of the book God:  The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.  The title seems very conclusive, doesn’t it?  In this book Stenger states:  “As far as we can tell from our current scientific knowledge, the universe we observe with our senses and scientific instruments can be described in terms of matter and material processes alone” (16).[14] This is one of the lynchpin understandings of the new atheist; however the idea itself is not new.  It is scientism in the context of philosophical materialism, the belief that existence can be explained purely in natural terms as a result of the scientific process.  I will here employ the idea of epistemic scientism defined by Mikael Stenmark:

We can call this form of scientism, epistemic scientism, and define it as:  (4) The view that the only reality that we can know anything about is the one science has access to (4).[15]

It would seem that epistemic scientism is one of the foundational assumptions made by the new atheists.  Also, an assumption that the scientific reality is the only one in existence is an inference often made from this epistemic scientism.  The idea that only empirically verifiable matters of fact are epistemologically sound is not a new idea.  Quite the contrary, it dates back to the earliest empiricist and logical positivist philosophers.[16] Indeed one could make the claim that a wise Hebrew teacher himself had such tendencies when he made his observations “under the sun” a few thousand years ago.[17] This epistemic scientism can lead to what Stenmark calls methodological scientism, in which scientists claim that their judgment should, from a position of superiority, evaluate the opinions of all other academic disciplines.[18] Dawkins, Harris, Stenger and others do precisely that when they claim to be more aware of the truth of the world than philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, and the like.  For example, it will be biologists who teach us about survival mechanisms that instill in us the proper understanding of ethics and morality.[19] The scientific view is superior, and religion will eventually be outsourced as religion itself is defined in exclusively natural terms.[20] One of the most important characteristics of the new atheism is its foundational premise that only science can save humanity from its colossally ignorant and superstitious past of religious belief.

Not surprisingly, then, another characteristic of the new atheists is their heartfelt plea to abolish religion and faith as they are unreasonable and ignorant approaches to human living.  The new atheists are convinced that if the influence of religion continues to linger in a culture, the effects will be devastating:

Many are still eager to sacrifice happiness, compassion, and justice in this world, for a fantasy of a world to come.  These and other degradations await us along the well-worn path of piety.  Whatever our religious difference may mean for the next life, they have only terminus in this one- a future of ignorance and slaughter.[21]

Implicit in this understanding of the new atheists are at least a few propositions.  First, that religion is responsible for the ills of the world, and that abolition of religion will be equal to a cleansing of the world of moral ambiguity, hatred, and other tragedies.  Second, implicit in the new atheists’ understanding is the idea that religion has not contributed to happiness, compassion, or justice in this world in any meaningful way.  Not only are theists guilty of the moral horrors of the world, they are also responsible for all the good that they do not do, or have prevented others from doing.  This seems to be a common premise in atheist literature.  Theists are often accused of being indifferent in the processes of self-improvement or societal betterment.  For example, Douglas Krueger claims:  “Many theists prefer to think that one can lead an important, purposeful life without doing much in the way of self-improvement, and this belief, perhaps, is part of the explanation of why theism is so popular.”[22] This idea that religion either gets in the way of the good, or as Christopher Hitchens says, “poisons everything,” is common in the new atheism. [23] Suffice it to say that from a purely empirical standard this premise seems overreaching and simply incorrect in its radical and uncompromising nature, it is nonetheless, a prevalent attitude and belief among the new atheists.  One cannot deny that people have done horrors in the name of religion.  However, the new atheists are also quite reserved, if not downright sheepish, in their very intermittent, sparse confessions that theists have at least done occasional good.  It is no wonder that Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias reserves some of his strongest language in a critique of these writers:  “… he is calling for the banishment of all religious belief.  ’Away with this nonsense’ is their battle cry!  In return, they promise a world of new hope and unlimited horizons- once we have shed this delusion of God.  I have news for them – news to the contrary (16).”[24] The new atheists, one can only assume, are ready for this response from the believing world.  The language of Harris leads us to believe that nothing good can remain if even a grain of the spiritual mentality survives:

What is the alternative to religion, as we know it?  As it turns out, this is the wrong question to ask.  Chemistry was not an ‘alternative’ to alchemy; it was a wholesale exchange of ignorance at its most rococo for genuine knowledge.  We will find that, as with alchemy, to speak of ‘alternatives’ to religious faith is to miss the point.[25]

Here I simply cannot resist the temptation to mention the historical irony that most early medieval theists forebode alchemy.  Moving on, however, the point is that the new atheists are so militant that they believe that religion must be completely eradicated.  While they rightly criticize the genocidal campaigns of religions past, they still desire the complete eradication of religious dogma and superstition.  This is not as violent as a physical genocide, but it would certainly be equivalent to a mental one.  I would say a “spiritual” one, but that term is meaningless since the advent of Crick and Watson to atheists such as Dawkins and Harris.  Doesn’t “X people’s way of thinking has caused all human evils” sound like a dangerous argument?  And further, is the community entrenched within the scientistic premise free from all moral criticism as a logical corollary from the above argument?  Science has been much freer from criticism than religion because of the conveniences that modern technology has given.  Today, part of education in any field, including philosophy, is an introduction to the basics of modern science.  Many academics and intellectuals perhaps even fear-criticizing science for the possibility that they will be seen as less credible.   Still, as science continues to advance, a better understanding of the various philosophies and practices of science would be invaluable to any wary scholar.[26] In fact, many of the religious mindset sees science as potentially accommodating to their worldview (2).[27] However, Dawkins is convinced that anyone of the religious mindset will not read his work:  “Among the more effective immunological devices is a dire warning to avoid opening a book like this, which is surely a work of Satan.  But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there:  people whose childhood indoctrination was not too insidious, or for other reasons didn’t ‘take,’ or whose native intelligence is strong enough to overcome it.”[28] To rephrase the argument only slightly to reveal its true nature propositionally:  intelligent people are synonymous with open-minded people.  The faithful do not occupy such a category, ergo; they cannot appreciate the finer arguments and brilliance in my book.  Aren’t open-minded, intelligent people the ones who only decide something on an empirical basis?  While there is noticeable empirical data in the thesis Dawkins advances, one must also understand that the case for a certain metaphysic, or perhaps lack thereof, is also being advocated on what is more rationalistic, and not entirely empirical, grounds.  Many of the chapters of Dawkins’s book focus on logical arguments for the existence of God or wrongdoings committed by theists.  That is why, built in to this understanding that religion must go, is what could be considered to be intellectual elitism, or the view that anyone who disagrees with the new atheists are wrong or even idiotic, and must go.  The faithful, or people who are too thoroughly indoctrinated in their own worldview, are “damaged goods” and cannot receive the wisdom imparted by the new atheists.  I ask my reader now to consider:  Isn’t every author, regardless of his or her ideological stripe, deeply indoctrinated and steeped in the worldview they advocate?  Nietzsche, an atheist, accused every philosopher of writing a personal “confession” rather than a systematic pursuit of relevant inquiries (66).[29] Does the premise of the old atheist apply to the thought of the new?  The entire assumption that a completely “open” mind exists is one that can be challenged.  Even the most intelligent mind has its own ideological preferences.  And isn’t the scientific method a way to use inductive reasoning to strengthen what was first a philosophical premise (42-43)?[30] Much of what I’ve just written, I know, must sound like the critique that was meant to come later; to the reader, and to Dawkins et al, I apologize.  Despite this, the new atheism could be considered nothing more than a regime change after a bloody coup, where the spiritual bodies of clerics from multiple faiths are torn asunder.  In their place will be scientific materialists who are committed to explaining all phenomena with science and would appreciate the non-interference of all other academic disciplines.  With its strong commitment to a particular philosophy (namely the modern form of empiricist philosophy, naturalism, and scientism), its desire to completely remove one way of thinking from humanity, and its belief that those who think otherwise are fools, the new atheism, ironically enough, seems to be guilty of some of the “sins” (if I may use that word) of the religious powers of the past.  This is one of theologian John Haught’s most significant critiques of the new atheism:

Instead of compromising with religious faith in the genteel way that secular and religious moderates have done in the past, the new atheists want us to abandon any such respect for freedom of faith and religious thought altogether.  Nothing impedes a clear –sighted grasp of the world’s most urgent problem today- religiously inspired terrorism-more thoughtlessly than moderate theology and liberal secular tolerance of faith (9).[31]

If freethinking is so valuable, why destroy so many forms of theology so that atheism can reign unopposed?  As said before, is this not analogous to a bloody regime change after a coup?  Is this not simply exchanging what the new atheist calls the despotism of monotheism for a subtler form of the same political method?  Regardless, what the new atheists call for clearly is the complete removal of the religious consciousness from humanity.  The new atheism is a quest to dethrone this self-perpetuating, yet fictitious sacred and uphold the true natural order.

Perhaps there is one more attitude of the new atheists that is worth note.  That is their critique of agnosticism and other epistemologies that do not posit at least some form of certitude. For example, Harris is sharply critical of relativism.[32] This is one of the more interesting positions taken by the new atheists, who also appear to affirm a worldview that posits some form of absolute truth.  There is an overwhelming confidence flowing from the propositions made by these new atheists.  For example, consider this excerpt from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, from a section entitled “The Poverty of Agnosticism:”   “Nevertheless, it is a common error, which we shall meet again, to leap from the premise that the question of God’s existence and his non-existence are equiprobable.”[33] Dawkins makes distinctions between temporary agnosticism and permanent, principled agnosticism, in fairness to his argument.  However, the new atheist literature seems to disdain “on the fence” thinking as much as do many theistic absolutists.  This is peculiar, and very interesting.  In fact, one may be forced to admit here some respect for the new atheists because at least, rather than taking some convoluted, postmodern deconstructionist way out of epistemology, they attack the problems of the philosophical question of knowledge directly.  Furthermore, they reject what seems to be a growing wave of agnosticism and/or relativism in American thought.  They take a side.  One that often offends, true, and one with which I disagree profoundly, true, but they take a side.  They claim knowledge.  They construct a system, as the philosophers of old.  What an act of faith.

What inference can be made from this attitude?  Dawkins believes that some matters of epistemology cannot be reacted to in a sort of knee-jerk fashion, so he advocates the occasional temporary strain of agnosticism until empirical data is found.[34] Yet if the question of God is one where only probability, and not certitude, is available to us (keep in mind Stenger says it is resolved in the negative, which makes him a “7” on Dawkins’ scale),[35] isn’t he being overly critical of theists by calling them “delusional?”  There seems to be in the new atheist literature, a sort of incongruity here.  For now, however, let us observe that the new atheists ask the agnostics of the world to decide and shed the God hypothesis.  This criticism of agnosticism and relativism seems to be a corollary from their epistemology of empirical verification.  Science produces definite results, given enough time.  The impression one receives is that Dawkins believes that his belief will be completely vindicated given sufficient time:  “It may be that humanity will never reach the quietus of complete understanding, but if we do, I venture the confident prediction that it will be science, not religion, that brings us there.  And if that sounds like scientism, so much the better for scientism.”[36] That is a very profound confidence in science indeed, and why not?  Science has made amazing discoveries.  Amazing enough, though, to trump all other forms of human endeavor and thought?  Maybe so, says Dawkins, in fact, probably so.  Science will impart to humanity all the knowledge of which philosophy and religion have robbed it.

For example, as he laments that Bertrand Russell is not critical enough of Anselm’s ontological argument, Dawkins comments:

“My own feeling, to the contrary, would have been an automatic, deep suspicion of any line of reasoning that reached such a significant conclusion without feeding in a single piece of data from the real world.  Perhaps that indicates no more than that I am a scientist rather than a philosopher.”[37]

This statement is very illustrative of several elements in the new atheist thinking.  First, a non-empirical form of thought is very untrustworthy at best.  Second, a scientist might be better fit to discern and discover the truth than any other academe. Third, Dawkins critically observes that Russell himself may have been too generous an atheist that came across as more of an agnostic at critical times in his thought.  Dawkins quite often denigrates the work of philosophers and theologians.[38] In this statement, we see all the aforementioned elements of the new atheism weaving together.  Strangely enough, though, this does make Dawkins a definite philosopher very much like Popper, Carnap, or the early Wittgenstein.[39] Philosophy, science, and math, since their genesis (excuse me, inception), have often been overlapped and approached in a holistic, integrated fashion.  That is why the idea of a “renaissance man” is reminiscent of pre-modern and some early modern academic work.  Paschal, Newton, and others were interested in the arts, humanities, religion, philosophy, and science.  Science was once called natural philosophy.[40] Also, Harris and Dawkins, the two new atheists cited throughout this work, express themselves very much like philosophers.  Propositions, that is, affirmations and denials of multiple truth claims, are made.[41] The reader is expected to agree with the affirmations and denials made in the work.[42] If I may be ruthless as to employ such terms, the new atheists hope to “convert” people who may be agnostic or on the fence.  These three elements together are the most significant characteristics of new atheism:

1.)  An epistemological stance almost completely identical to early forms of radical empiricism including logical positivism; this is rooted in scientism and philosophical materialism

2.) The adamant belief that the world shall not be clean and pure until all religion is gone

3.)  A repudiation of epistemic and moral relativism that are symptomatic of an underlying agnosticism

How then, does a theist (or perhaps even agnostic not totally sold on these premises) respond?  What are some of the implications that result from taking these stances?  This shall be the focus of the third and final section.

III. Considering the Three Characteristics of New Atheism

3-A-i.  Scientism and Skepticism

What then, are we to conclude from the three perspectives described of the new atheism?  Are they conclusive, air-tight, arguments with no weakness or undesired implications?  No, they are not, and it is incredibly important to make some distinctions.  Let us consider the propositions, starting with a scientistic method accompanied by an underlying philosophical materialism.

First, let us look at the ideas which are interconnected in the new atheism.  It has become a more viable philosophical stance now because science is believed to explain more.  Scientism has, not surprisingly, been at the forefront of human consciousness when science makes it greatest advances.[43] From some exciting breakthroughs and advances, the additional, and less warranted step in epistemology is made to subdue all knowledge claims to the realm we call science.  This is the attitude of the new atheist, and here they differentiate little, if at all, from old atheists in the vein of Sigmund Freud:  “Freud calls his worldview ‘scientific,’ because of its premise that knowledge comes only from research.  Of course, this basic premise cannot itself be based on scientific research.  Rather, it is a philosophical assumption that cannot be proven” (37).[44] Here I believe Nicholi and other academicians have noticed some of the potential flaws within the epistemology that has sustained the “no-God hypothesis.”

For instance, when it is argued that science cannot scientifically prove the whole validity of science, this is a critical assertion in any realm of discourse concerning human knowledge.  Let’s mull over, for the time being, Harris’s view of science:

But all spheres of discourse are not on the same footing, for the simple reason that not all spheres of discourse seek the same footing (or any footing whatsoever).  Science is science because it represents our most committed effort to verify that our statements about the world are true (or at least not false).  We do this by observation and experiment within the context of a theory.  To say that a given scientific theory is wrong is not to say that it may be wrong in its every particular, or that any other theory stand an equal chance of being right.[45]

First of all, Harris’s first assessment could and probably even should be construed as a clever form of the logical fallacy begging the question when it connects to the greater dialogue of the book.  It is of the form that presupposes one of its most basic underlying tenets to achieve its conclusion; namely that science and empirical epistemology are superior (or on “higher footing”) to other forms of knowledge.  A theory in science is a truth that has considerable empirical momentum, but not quite so great that as a law; here I want to refer the reader to Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, where I believe the most prevalent understanding of science and the philosophy that conjoin to it are understood.[46] However, can one isolated experiment, or particular, lead to a universal statement that Harris or Dawkins make about the seemingly unerring nature of science?  Further, can any number of scientific experiments verify with finality the metaphysical assumption that nature is all there is to existence?  In fact, can even a great bundle of particulars establish the philosophical premise that empirical data is the only reliable, true form of knowledge?  One could argue that to an extent, the new atheist equivocates the meanings, or at least results, of inductive and deductive reasoning.  At times they argue that science is the strength of their argument when the real form of argument used is deductive, namely a kind of reasoning that follows a progression of related premises.  Furthermore, a scientific conclusion is cited when there is an a priori hypothesis included in an experiment which is repeated to test that hypothesis.  Often the new atheist acts as if these two domains are nearly indistinguishable.  This is, they subtly weaken or even deny, the difference, between ground and consequent type logical thinking, and causal relationships explored in the sciences.  C.S. Lewis might say:

But naturalism, even if it is not purely materialistic, seems to me to involve the same difficulty, though in a somewhat less obvious form.  It discredits our processes of reasoning or at least reduces their credit to such a humble level that it can no longer support Naturalism itself.  The easiest way of exhibiting this is to notice the two senses of the word because… (Lewis then explains ground and consequent vs. causal uses of the word)…But unfortunately the two systems are wholly distinct.  To be caused is not to be proved.  Wishful thinking, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, are all caused, but they are ungrounded.  Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually exclusive (218-219).[47]

In a nutshell, one could say that the new atheist often increases the probability of an inductive result to a certainty, or as some scientists might, say, blend the line between correlation (likely relationship) and causality (definite relationship).  Simply put, science and reason are not one and the same, and inductive processes may never be able to yield absolute certainty.  Also, reason and evidence are separate criteria, established from two different ways of thinking, not one.

Additionally, one must note that in just this one instance the theist might have a very strange bedfellow in David Hume.  David Hume is readily quoted by Dawkins concerning his repudiation of miracles, the ontological argument, and teleology (of any sort, back to this later).[48] However, David Hume also took some of the empiricist and rationalist understanding to task in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.  The proper understanding of Hume, I believe, is that he generated by the end of his philosophy a radical skepticism, which not only criticized religious believers (and to give Dawkins credit, this is the group that Hume loathed greatest), but also those who had unshakable faith in human reasoning or any endeavor connected to it as such.  Simply put, Hume’s sword of skepticism is double-edged. At first, it seems that Hume is in complete accord with the dogmatic empiricism of the new atheists:

It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of any thing, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses (62).[49]

Hume here says that the greatest certainty should be assigned to those ideas that can be tested by, or correspond to, our senses.  This is empiricism.  Any claim of meaning is one that is tested by our senses.  Harris says it more forcefully still:  “There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life.  But we will find that it requires no faith in untestable propositions-Jesus was born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God-for us to do this…How is it that, in this one area of our lives, we have convinced ourselves that our beliefs about the world can float entirely free of reason and evidence?”[50] Harris’s implicit assumption, again, is that what is testable is supreme.  We can see that there is a strong resemblance between the thinking of Hume and Harris here.  What is critical is the assumption that only those ideas derived from sensory stimulus are on solid footing.  However, what is the deeper rational basis that continues to establish the intelligibility of causal and sensory data?  Hume might say it is a constant conjunction, rather than necessary connection:

But though both these definitions be drawn from circumstances foreign to the cause, we cannot remedy this inconvenience, or attain any more perfect definition, which may point out that circumstance in the cause, which gives it a connexion with its effect.  We have no idea of this connexion, nor even any distinct notion what it is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it (77).[51]

Furthermore, in this section of the Enquiries, Hume says that what we mean by causation is, either the ground-consequent relationship:  namely that every time one thing happens, x, y happens for a reason unknown to us; or the cause-effect relationship:  when I do x, y happens; x causes y. In the first case, the two events are correlated, that is we understand that they are related to each other in some way.[52] In the second, the two events are related precisely, and the relationship is better isolated and understood.  Philosophers would refer to the latter case as a necessary cause.  Hume, in this passage, has cast skepticism on both forms of proposition.  Hume undercuts, in the whole of his philosophy, the entire human ability to claim knowledge that relates objects to the one perceiving them.  Is it always the case that we really “know” that one thing causes another?  While Harris and Dawkins have great faith in reason, Hume does not share their optimism.  Hume believed that the human reasoning process was subservient to particular desires, some of which may have been philosophical presuppositions.  Furthermore, is it possible that science occasionally “cuts corners” and assumes that one sensory experience is caused by another when it is only correlated?  Certainly this has happened in the past.  What Hume suggests here is a significant skepticism in the ability of human beings to universalize from a particular and make a working cause-effect theory.  It is a skepticism that cuts at some of the very foundational assumptions that make any worldview complete, be it scientific or religious.  Imagine an acid so strong that it could dissolve the physical makeup of anything.  How would you contain such a substance?    Hume’s skepticism, while not as extreme as that of a Descartes, still comes very close.[53] Kant, a contemporary of Hume, noticed the degree of his skepticism:

Hume started mainly from a single but important concept in metaphysics, namely, that of the connection of cause and effect (including its derivative concepts of force and action, etc.). He challenged reason, which pretends to have given birth to this concept of herself, to answer him by what right she thinks anything could be so constituted that if that thing be posited, something else also must necessarily be posited; for this is the meaning of the concept of cause.  He demonstrated irrefutably that it was entirely impossible for reason to think a priori and by means of concepts such a combination as involves necessity (3).[54]

Hume’s was a radical skepticism that Kant combated with all his philosophical strength, however today in the case of postmodern thinkers such as Michel Foucault, the cases made by Hume have gone even further in tearing away at reason by its seams.[55] In short, Dawkins and Harris want to have their cake and eat it too when this isn’t really possible, slaying the beast of religiously based teleology while persevering within another teleology founded purely in reason and/or science.[56] Yet when teleology is undercut wholly, and annihilated, all ensuing forms also die.  Citing Hume to ascertain greater certainty in your worldview is not unlike digesting arsenic in the hopes that only your unneeded appendix will be destroyed and usefully removed.  In all fairness to the new atheists, all scholars have a tendency to glean from their contemporaries what is found to be useful while discarding the rest, but to take the whole of Hume seriously is to live a life of a sort of religious skepticism; that includes skepticism toward advances in all human epistemology.  Hume is more agnostic than he is new atheist.  Yet the very divorce of Dawkins and others from agnosticism should also include a more significant divorce from the work of Hume.  Many critiques of the new atheism involve a critique of the scientism that doesn’t always regard some of the important dialectics that have taken place in the philosophy of science, and that they have created a philosophy that doesn’t always honor the logical implications of its sources or deepest presuppositions.  Namely, once one finds skepticism powerful enough to kill God, it is quite possible that such skepticism also eradicates all other forms of philosophical transcendence, including the hallowed reverence which some ascribe to science and reasoning.

3-A-ii.  Is it wrong to look back, upward or inward?  Scientism, History, and Metaphysics

If scientism is a meaningful or correct approach to knowledge and human living, we must consider what some of the potential effects of scientism are.  For instance, because empirical observation is firmly rooted in the eternal now, the scientistic viewpoint casts a shadow of doubt upon the academic discipline of history, or as I simply define it (indeed some historians might get mad at me here), “looking backward.”  Yet additionally, since scientism is founded on the empiricist premise, it might have trouble with metaphysics, which again I simply define as looking “inward and or upward.”  The advocate of scientism looks exclusively outward in a sort of epistemological tunnel vision.  The logical positivist, A.J. Ayer, commented on the difficulty of accumulating sense experiences for the rugged empiricist:  “How, for example, can we hold it to be possible to express perceptual judgments in terms of sense-data if we are obliged to deny that any sense-datum can be experienced by more than one person (136)”?[57] How can the practices of metaphysics and history be equally valid alongside science if they are not predicated upon the immediate individual sense experience and subsequent line of inductive reasoning?

One of the key assumptions of the new atheists is that the longer ago an idea has its origin, the more certainly we can dismiss it as a source of knowledge.  The fact that religions are old and science new is considered enough to establish superiority:  “Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago-and much of this knowledge is incompatible with Scripture.”[58] At first, this statement seems to some as undeniably true.  However, upon reflection this statement does not seem as unilaterally true as one might think.  Surely even secular scholars who read the Bible gain some sort of historical understanding of ancient society and literature?  And is it possible that ancient man, at every critical point and turn, knew nothing of value to the contemporary person?  And what of medieval monks who in their late teens were often literate in two or more languages?  Do they not trump a modern American high school graduate who cannot read his or her native language?  And doesn’t the critic who says that a Bible cannot address modern problems admit that non-Biblical society has its own problems not caused by a theistic worldview?  All of these seem like fair contentions, but not so with Harris.  The truth is told much the same way time is:  with a watch.  Yet that watch moves forward, pushing progress to the next horizon.  Never once is it considered that the ancients knew and understood great truths that we may have missed.  The one thing that Harris finds interesting in the past is some randomly selected Buddhist literature and the religious attitude of the East.[59] However even his respect here is conditioned by the belief that science will ultimately close the gap that made the wisdom of these ancient gurus seem mystical in quality.  The epilogue Harris writes finalizes his view that anything from long ago can speak authoritatively to modern man:  “books that embrace the narrowest spectrum of political, moral, scientific, and spiritual understanding- books that, by their antiquity alone, offer us the most dilute wisdom with respect to the present- are still dogmatically thrust upon us as the final word on matters of the greatest significance.”[60] Antiquity, that is, something of old, is synonymous with irrelevance.[61] Does anyone else from the outside of the new atheism looking in see a certain eschatology associated with the behemoth of progress?  To coin a neologism, one might call the new atheism “temporocentric.”  To judge the worth and value of other cultures from the now, to look at our human predecessors with disdain and contempt, that is the absolute now.  Will our children do the same?  Will they look at the scientism and new atheism as rudimentary and foolish?  It is quite possible that they might look at the new atheists much the same way the new atheists regard those of religious disposition now.

Moreover, what is the fate of metaphysics in the hands of the new atheists?  Well, if there is any transcendental element to how one defines metaphysics, there may be no metaphysics in the eyes of modern man.  Philosophical naturalism, the view that the natural world is all that exists, is a view that has been advocated by several philosophers including Bertrand Russell and others (25).[62] This is the worldview that conditions some scientists today. Because science has created many technologies that make life more convenient, it is often sheltered from criticism.  Dawkins has never considered this in his many diatribes on how respectfully religion is treated in the public sphere.[63] In fact, because religion can often be a voice of dissension against a given cultural practice or because it requires a deep commitment, religion is often the most persecuted and discouraged form of human experience there is.  Many do not think that the benefits of religion outweigh the costs.  As such the new atheists do away with faith and God, and also expel from possibility life after death, or any special metaphysical significance humanity might have had in the world.  Furthermore, the belief that love, art, and other societal fixtures can be explained in purely natural terms, removes the transcendent or mystical quality from them.  It is not true love, which motivates, but a desire of a genetic matrix to perpetuate itself.  Art is nothing more than pigmented dye on a canvas.  Our minds lack volition to transcend their own material processing; contrary to the atheism of Sartre or Nietzsche, the new atheism is one that posits at minimum a significant genetic determinism; humans are not totally free.  This seems to be the inevitable case Dawkins would make.  Consider this excerpt from The Selfish Gene:  “Genes have no foresight.  They do not plan ahead.  Genes just are, some genes more so than others, and that is all there is to it (24).”[64] Dawkins also creates imagery that we humans are not unlike puppets on marionette strings, dancing to our DNA.  He quickly adds that he does not believe in total genetic determinism, because other factors can place overwhelming influence on us.[65] Meanwhile, what are these other influences?  Could religion and/or metaphysical speculation be one of them?

Yet in all this scientism and philosophical naturalism, the internal dialogue of the mind is merely the determined mechanics of genetics that we do not yet fully understand, but one day surely will.  However the dogmatic view of the external material world as all of reality could eliminate some useful aspects of the human self:  “The problem is that the cognitive state of being transfixed by objects ‘out there’ has become so much a part of modern intellectual sensibilities that the temptation arises to assume that there really is no ‘in here’ at all.  Or, if there is, it is a wispy lining on the underside of what is available only to objectivist scrutiny.”[66] It is precisely that kind of tunnel vision and lack of introspection that has led philosophers from Socrates forward to push us back to it, sometimes making himself an annoying “gadfly” while doing so.  When we are forced to examine the “in here”, the life of mind or spirit or soul, we are often inconvenienced with dark and deep truths that break through the conventional wisdom of the modern day and raise our level of awareness.  Modern humans, perhaps more so than any other time of history, are totally preoccupied.  Paschal takes the inability of modern man to look inward to task:

Sometimes, when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles which they face at Court, or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and passions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on; I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room…  Imagine any situation you like, add up all the blessings with which you could be endowed, to be king is still the finest thing in the world; yet if you imagine one with all the advantages of his rank, but no means of diversion, left to ponder and reflect on what he is, this limp felicity will not keep him going (172)[67]

It is also Paschal that coined the term “ennui” that we generally translate as “boredom.”  How ironic is it that modern people are freer to entertain themselves than ever before and yet the constant complaint of boredom rears its ugly head?  It is precisely because of this detachment from a metaphysical sense of self that has led down this path.  Modern humans, almost pathologically, deny the importance of looking away from the external world to the world of inner mental dialogue.  That is why sensory deprivation itself has become a marketable, salable entity as of late.  Do you care to get away?  People enmeshed in the modern world of scientism long desperately, even for a few short moments, to once again look inward and feel that there is some meaning in doing so.

Yet once the premise of philosophical naturalism has been established, the ability to look inward deteriorates, as does the ability to look upward.  Even Harris, when admitting the inability of scientific reductionism to completely satisfy human yearnings for ethical truths; looks to something such as happiness to build up ethics.[68] Yet what if some are “wired” for violence or other unpleasant acts?  It seems inevitable that once a naturalist has considered happiness to be the ultimate criterion of ethics and meaning, they have at once relativized the effort to discern ethical truth.  Because people often define or experience happiness very differently, this would necessitate moral relativism and the creation of thousands of different moral paradigms.  Yet it is relativism that the new atheists critique!  What if there were an absolute reference point to define human goodness and happiness?  Would that not cure the difficulty that Harris faces in trying to simultaneously assert ethical absolutism and philosophical naturalism?  For years religion served just such a purpose in the minds and hearts of people all over the world. The problem here is that when one looks inward only, instead of inward and upward, anything becomes morally permissible.  The consistent atheists of old knew this truth instinctively, that with God dead, man was free, all too free.  What the new atheists desire is some of the advantages of the old theistic morality while totally doing away with the structure of the theistic epistemology.  In reality, the two are not so easily separated.

3-B.  Better off without religion?

The world would be free of tragedy and pain if religion were to quietly die a noble death?  No, not if the twentieth century has taught us anything of value.  History has revealed that the mind of scientism can be as destructive and morally repugnant as the face of religion.  Sam Harris is deeply concerned that nuclear proliferation will lead to religious extremists destroying the entire world.[69] Yet what Harris either forgets to mention or doesn’t want to admit, is that religion did not create those weapons of mass destruction.  Science did.  It was within a private, isolated scientific community that an intense curiosity to learn new things was warped into knowledge that could destroy millions of lives in an instant.  It is ironic that Harris calls for the end of faith because of his fear of something that science created.

Without religion, it is quite possible that a number of ethically responsible people will consider the principle of harm and become sensitive to the happiness of others.  However, the twentieth century has provided examples of harsh murder and genocide at the hands of leaders who were also convinced that religion was the “opiate of the masses.”  Leaders like Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao provide examples of people who held disdain for religious thinking.  Dawkins’ argument for the case of Hitler makes him out to be a politician first before anything else, but still he was here in The God Delusion forced to say that although there are evil atheists, atheism isn’t causal of evil behavior.[70] Yet in so admitting, Dawkins has undermined the argument here that religion is a necessary cause of evil.  If it were as simple as all atheists are good and numerous religious people are bad, than any rational individual would assume bar none that atheism is the more profitable worldview.  However because there are numerous practitioners of religion that do moral good in the world such as feeding the hungry and comforting the afflicted, then the argument that religion is inherently evil loses much of its strength.  If both atheism and religion can lead to evil, then both are equally sufficient causes of evil.  The perhaps frightening reality that humans have learned together is that simply breathing seems in the human case to be a sufficient cause for evil.  That puts all humans on equal moral footing, no matter how loath the new atheists may be to admit it.

If there were a world without religion, a new atheist paradise of sorts, what would the new “summum bonum” be?  What would be the greatest good?  No eternity or life after death exists in the human consciousness any longer.  Furthermore, through some act of the natural selection mechanism the part of the brain that lent itself to belief now no longer existed.  Imagine this world.  Is it utopia, without violence?  Do people no longer fight over resources and ideas?  It seems highly unlikely.  Darwin was influenced by the work of Thomas Malthus, a scientist who studied population mechanics:

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.  From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form (29).[71]

Thomas Malthus and many other biologists and scientists of his time became increasingly interested in how certain populations of animals die out.  Malthus even occasionally extended his findings into speculation about the future of the global human population.  Some have even embraced ideologies called “neo-Malthusian,” which suggest that if humanity is to survive, it must de-industrialize.  It seems, in our speculation about a Darwinian paradise that survival itself would be the summum bonum, or greatest good, conferred upon its lucky recipients.  Will not, even without religion, humans continue to fight over land rights, water usage, food supplies, and money that secures these precious goods instrumental for survival?  That “struggle” to which Darwin referred was the ultimate “arche” of philosophical naturalism, and inevitably leads to survival as ultimate good.  If religion is as harmful to the survival of humanity as the new atheists claim, Darwin’s process will simply eliminate it naturally.  Apparently, Dawkins, Harris, and the rest don’t want to wait that long.

3-C.  Certainty

What is most surprising about the new atheism is its view that absolute truth exists, despite its appeal to Darwinian mechanisms and critique of religiously justified absolute truth claims.  This truth is a scientific one.  With Dawkins, evolution has seemed to be this absolute.  With Harris, the principle of harm has seemed closest to what he elevates as universally applicable.  Given their critique of religious behavior as wrong, it is not surprising that they appeal to some universal moral standard to judge the behavior.  However, what is strange about this is that the same conclusion about some moral truths as being universal led the thinker C.S. Lewis down a different path toward theism.[72] At the beginning of The God Delusion, Dawkins notes how the same experience of nature could lead one to priesthood and another to be an advocate of atheism.[73] Why can the same experience convince one person that there is no God and convince another that there is?  Even if we were to assume that any two human beings would have the same epistemic interpretation of an event, this does not necessarily entail them having the same emotional or philosophical view as a result.  Some may see pain as a strengthening event, others as a sure sign that God does not exist.  Still others may see it as something that will come and go, while being indifferent to the possibility that any intrinsic meaning can be assigned to the event.  Perhaps to put it more simply, isn’t the easiest way to answer a question regarding our interpretation of an event, “I don’t know,” or “I’m not sure?”  This is often a dissatisfactory answer when we consider the curious and inquisitive nature of the human mind.  Even more so, sometimes this answer is impossible because of the lack of existential satisfaction which it provides.  Yet if the new atheism is fueled forward by intellectual honesty, wouldn’t it be the more defendable position?

The new atheists desire to transform the culture, not from a culture which is blindly faithful to a culture that regards with suspicion all knowledge claims, but to a culture which regards with suspicion only those claims which religion makes.  The idea that a clear and articulate scientific method can lead to irrefutable results has been questioned not merely by religious extremists, but also by secular scientists who see the very dogmatic views of some scientists to be hazardous to science itself:

On closer analysis we even find that science knows no ‘bare facts’ at all but that the ‘facts’ that enter our knowledge are already viewed in a certain way and are, therefore, essentially complex, chaotic, and full of mistakes, and entertaining as the ideas it contains, and these ideas in turn will be as complex, chaotic, full of mistakes, and entertaining as are the minds of those who invented them.  Conversely, a little brainwashing will go a long way in making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more ‘objective’ and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchangeable rules.  Scientific education as we know it today has precisely this aim… A person’s religion, for example, or his metaphysics, or his sense of humor (his natural sense of humour and not the inbred and always rather nasty kind of jocularity one finds in specialized professions) must not have the slightest connection with his scientific activity.  His imagination is restrained, and even his language ceases to be his own.  This is again reflected in the nature of scientific ‘facts’ which are experienced as being independent of opinion, belief, and cultural background (11-12).[74]

The “anarchic” approach to knowledge that is described at length in Against Method warns of dogmatism of any kind encroaching upon the human imagination, a special part of the mind that Einstein, the hero of the new atheists, held in high regard.  Many of the new atheists are quick to warn of the danger of religious absolutism.  What they suggest as the remedy?  A firm upholding of the scientific method with absolutely no religious influence exerted on any sector of the global culture.  A particular scientific paradigm, compounded with the philosophical premises of atheism and materialism, will simply take the place of the religious paradigm across the world.  The world will then be safe and move toward complete and utter knowledge of the universe.  Let us concede that this revolution shall work.  Is there any guarantee that with the knowledge greater achievements in science yield, that there will be an ethical use of the knowledge imparted?  Furthermore, with religion completely disbanded, wouldn’t the ethical justification have to come from some authoritarian, absolute form of global government?  Once the transcendental authorities of religion are removed, government seems to be the only significant way to unify and direct human knowledge and power.  In its simplest form, that is what government is, the association of people.   Despite the above thought experiment resultant from the concession of the new atheist revolution, one cannot hold in complete disdain the new atheistic desire for some form of certainty.  Yearning for certitude seems to be a common desire within every human mind.  However, if postmodern philosophy is any indication of the future of human epistemology, than any form of absolutism which could subsequently construct a “metanarrative” is viewed with equal suspicion.

Perhaps it seems hard to understand why the new atheistic belief, with its harsh criticism and blind watchmaker, [75] with random generation of a “replicator” gene over many trials and errors in primordial soup,[76] that we could arrive later at anything close to rational certainty when it is highly likely that there are thousands of different genetic matrixes that often yield diverse ways of thinking, if thinking is simply and completely a natural process.  That human opinion could converge upon any certain truth, rather than diverge into different schools of thought throughout turbulent periods of history and genetic alteration, seems very idealistic.  Perhaps far too optimistic and unreal if the greater implications of the new atheist viewpoint are taken seriously from start to logical finish.  This would seem to be the atheist introducing their own sort of wish fulfillment, that a truth would become equally obvious to all as we move to a Hegelian form of world spirit,[77] only in completely natural terms.  Harris, while repudiating the term “spirituality,” still uses the term “consciousness” to describe the human pursuit of happiness.[78] The new atheists seem to assert certain universally recognizable forms of human consciousness, such as sensation.  Yet even here certainty cannot be guaranteed, for the simple fact that some are blind, others deaf, some schizophrenic and thus imagine sensory experiences that the vast majority would tell them are not really real.  The world in evolutionary terms, as it expands, seems to yield significant diversity in numerous combinations, rather than a convergence upon any kind of epistemological or moral certainty.

IV.  Conclusion

While there are many more observations and thoughts I wish I could share regarding the new atheism, these were some of the thoughts that seemed to emerge as most important.  A theist must, for the very sake of their belief and personal integrity, interact in an ethical manner with an atheist.  An atheist, especially of the latest version, may respond with hatred, intellectual condescension, or a dismissive attitude.  Ideally the meeting of an atheist and committed religious believer could result in a mutual learning process, however from what I’ve observed on Youtube that seems an unlikely scenario.  Nonetheless, I implore theists, especially Christians of which I am one, to strive to improve their faith.  For belief in God is not so simply defined as a delusion, or a completely unfounded assent to belief, it is an encompassing and enriching way of life.

List of Works Cited

Aeschliman, Michael D.  The Restitution of Man:  C.S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B.  Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1983.

Aronson, Ronald. “The New Atheists.” The Nation June 2007

Ayer, A.J.  The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.  London:  MacMillan and Company Ltd., 1963.  8^th ed.

—.  Ed.  Logical Positivism.  New York, New York:  The Free Press, 1959.

Burtt, E.A.  The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.  Garden City, New York:  Doubleday and Company, 1954.

Darwin, Charles.  The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection of The Preservation of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1958.  10^th ed.

Dawkins, Richard.  The Blind Watchmaker.  New York, New York:  W.W. Norton and Company, 1986.

—.  The God Delusion.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Houghton-Mifflin, 2006.

—.  The Selfish Gene.  Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press, 1989.

Feyerabend, Paul.  Against Method.  London, England:  Verso, 1988.  3^rd ed.

Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language.  Trans.  A.M.  Sheridan Smith.  New York, New York:  Pantheon Books, 1972.

Friedman, Michael.  Reconsidering Logical Positivism.  Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Glynn, Patrick.  God:  The Evidence, The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World.  Rocklin, California:  Prima Publishing, 1997.

Hangling, Oswald.  Ed.  Essential Readings in Logical Positivism.  Oxford, England:  Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd., 1981.

Harris, Sam.  The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.  New York, New York:  W.W.  Norton and Company, 2004.

Haught, John.  God and the New Atheists:  A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.  Louisville, Kentucky:  Westminister John Knox Press, 2008.

Hume, David.  Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning The Principles of Morals.  Ed.  P.H.  Nidditch.  Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1975.  3^rd ed.

Kant, Immanuel.  Trans.  Paul Carus/Rev.  James W. Ellington.  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.  Indianapolis, Indiana:  Hackett Publishing Company, 1977.  17^th ed.

Kreeft, Peter.  Christianity for Modern Pagans:  Paschal’s Pansees Edited, Outlined, and Explained.  San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1993.

Krueger, Douglas E.  What is Atheism?:  A Short Introduction.  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 1998.

Lewis, C.S.  Ed. Joseph Rutt/Ill. Kathleen Edwards. The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics.    San Francisco:  Harper Collins Publishing Company, 2002.

Melchert, Norman.  Ed.  The Great Conversation:  A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.  Mountain View, California:  Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999.

Nicholi, Armand  Jr.  The Question of God:  C.S.  Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Sex, Love, and The Meaning of Life.  New York, New York:  The Free Press, 2002.

Nietzsche, Friedrich.  Ed./Trans.  Walter Kaufmann.  The Portable Nietzsche.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1984.  23^rd ed.

Sorrell, Tom.  Scientism:  Philosophy and The Infatuation with Science.  London, England:  Routledge, Chapman, and Hall Inc., 1991.

Stenger, Victor J.  God: The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 2007.

Stenmark, Mikael.  Scientism:  Science, Ethics, and Religion.  Aldershot, England:  Ashgate Publishing Company, 2001.

Zacharias, Ravi.  The End of Reason:  A Response to the New Atheists.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Zondervan Publishing, 2008.

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[1] Krueger, Douglas.  (1998). What Is Atheism?  A Short Introduction.  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books

[2] Krueger, 23.

[3] To give a brief example of each in literature:  Jean Paul Sartre in existentialism, scientism from logical positivists such as AJ Ayers or writers like Freud and Carl Sagan, utopianism in a perfect free-association Marxist society a la “A Communist Manifesto”, or nihilism demonstrated by Nietzsche’s “madman.”

[4] In the case of Dawkins I have gleaned from The God Delusion, The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene (and thus consequently brushed up on some Darwin’s Origin) and from Sam Harris, The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.

[5] Two examples being God and the New Atheists by John Haught and The End of Reason by Ravi Zacharias, both of which are cited elsewhere in this paper.

[6] Ronald Aronson, “The New Atheists,” The Nation June 2007.

[7] Harris, Sam.  The End of Faith:  Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.  (2004).  New York:  W.W. Norton and Company.

[8] This idea of verification is a recurring theme in philosophical empiricism and philosophy of science, including Karl Popper et al., but here I refer to Moritz Schlick’s writing, “Meaning and Verification.”

Moritz Schlick, “Meaning and Verification,” Essential Readings in Logical Positivism, ed.  Oswald Hanfling (Oxford, England:  Basil Blackwell, 1981) 32-33.

[9] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 46.  Footnote in Dawkins which reminds us that Laplace (Napoleon’s associate) had no need of the “hypothesis of God” when writing his book on mathematics.

[10] Dawkins, Richard.  The Blind Watchmaker:  Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design.  (1986).  New York:  W.W. Norton and Company.

[11] An interesting movie that at least calls into question the view that creationists are running the schools’ biology departments, Expelled, by Ben Stein, is worth considering.   Dawkins is interviewed in this movie.

[12] Even Dawkins and Harris occasionally, and subtly, admit this.

[13] Harris, 185.

[14] Stenger, Victor J.  God:  The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist.  (2007).  Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books.

[15] Stenmark, Mikael.  Scientism:  Science, Ethics and Religion.  (2001), Burlington, Vermont:  Ashgate Publishing Company.

[16] This view is summarized effectively in an excellent introduction to philosophy textbook in its analysis of Wittgenstein and other early logical positivists:  Norman Melchert, ed.  The Great Conversation:  A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.  (Mountain View, California:  Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999) 627-632.

[17] The book of Ecclesiastes is ripe with just such a type of empirical observation of the world around us, namely ones made “under the sun.”  Dawkins might think me blasphemous or fundamentalist for bringing it up, but so be it.

[18] Stenmark, 2.

[19] Dawkins, Richard.  The God Delusion.  (2006).  New York:  Houghton-Mifflin Company.  In the particular section mentioned, Dawkins makes the argument that all human behavior can, and probably will be explained all in terms of Darwinian evolution.  (214-222)

[20] This is the thesis of The God Delusion’s chapter 5, “The Roots of Religion,” pp. 163-207.

[21] Harris, 223.

[22] Krueger, 82.

[23] Hitchens recently titled a book “How Religion Poisons Everything.”

[24] Zacharias, Ravi.  The End of Reason:  A Response to the New Atheists.  (2008).  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Zondervan Publishing.

[25] Harris, 14.

[26] One surprise here is that Dawkins and Harris are often dismissive of philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn (far from religious extremist), that do not cohere with their more dogmatic version of scientific reductionism.  I will address this later on.

[27] Glynn, Patrick.  (1997).  God:  The Evidence; The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World.  Rocklin, California:  Prima Publishing Inc.

[28] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 5-6.

[29] Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm.  “Mixed Opinions and Maxims,”  The Portable Nietzsche.  Ed./trans.  Walter Kaufmann.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1976.  38^th ed.

[30] This is an important criticism from opponents of strict scientism.  Aeschliman, Michael D.  (1983).  The Restitution of Man:  C.S.  Lewis and the Case Against Scientism.  Grand Rapids, Michigan:  William B.  Eerdman’s Publishing Company.

[31] Haught, John.  God and the New Atheists:  A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.  (2008).  Louisville, Kentucky:  Westminister John Knox Press.

[32] Harris, 178-182, a section of The End of Faith where he refers to relativism as a demon (curious word choice there, still he makes an interesting point in this part of the literature)

[33] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 51.

[34] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 47-48 (highlighted here is the differentiation between TAP and PAP as he calls it).

[35] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 50-51.  The scale is 1-7, 1 being staunch theist, 7 being staunch atheist.

[36] Richard Dawkins, “Tanner Lecture on Human Values” at Harvard University, November 19 and 10, 2003, cited by Science and Theology News online, http://www.stnews.org/archives/2004_february/web_x_richard.html, qtd. In Haught, God and the New Atheists, 19.

[37] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 82.

[38] As he did right after his critique of Bertrand Russell in The God Delusion, by suggesting that philosophers lacked common sense and this was his compliment to them (is he being sarcastic or not, I really don’t know, I could see it either way).

[39] All of whom were also weary of any statement whose truth did not borrow from some empirical touchstone.  Again, The Great Conversation, 627-632.

[40] Long ago in the time of Plato, science and philosophy were very closely connected, The Great Conversation, 131-132.

[41] The Great Conversation, 612-614.

[42] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 5:  “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”

[43] Stenmark, vii, “The overwhelming intellectual and practical successes of science that lie behind its impact on our culture have led some people to believe that there are no real limits to the competence of science, no limits to what can be achieved in the name of science.”

[44] Nicholi, Armand.  (2002) The Question of God:  C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.  New York:  The Free Press.

[45] Harris, 75-76.  He glosses over influential philosophers of science Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper to get here, no less.

[46] Please consider the entirety of the book, from its differentiation between different levels of scientific knowledge and also the political/social structure that lends itself to most revolutions.  Furthermore one of his central premises as I understand it is that scientists can only find certainty in degrees or probabilities, not in 0% (total falsification) to 100%(total confirmation or verification)  Dawkins, Harris, and other new atheists, do not agree with some of his findings.

[47]Lewis, C.S.  “Miracles.”  The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics.  Ed. Joseph Rutt, ill. Kathleen Edwards, (2002).  San Francisco:  Harper Collins Publishing Company.

[48] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 83, 91, 114, 157.

[49] Hume, David.  Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals.  Ed.  L.A.  Selby-Bigge.  Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1975.  3^rd ed.

[50] Harris, 16-17.

[51] Hume, 77.

[52] Hume, 77.

[53] Melchert, 337, “solipsism: a view that each of you (if there is anyone out there!) must state for yourself in this way:  “I am the only thing that actually exists.”  It is perhaps the most radical form of skepticism possible in the world of philosophy; it is highly likely that Descartes influenced Hume and Kant.

[54] Kant, Immanuel.  Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.  Ed. James W. Ellington.  Indianapolis, Indiana:  Hackett Publishing Company, 1977.

[55] Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge.  Trans. A.M.  Sheridian Smith.  New York, New York:  Pantheon Books, 1972.  Michel Foucault wanted to “decenter” history by removing any idea of teleology from it.  In other words, history does not seem to move according to a greater or transcendental purpose.  This is an emphatic repudiation of idealism ranging from Christianity to Hegel.  While Dawkins and Harris posit some survival function of biology and anthropology as a teleological purpose derived in Darwinian terms, Foucault, a more legitimate successor to the philosophy of Hume, leaves us with not so neat a view of the “future of reason.”

[56] I do not take the position of accepting Harris’s premise that faith is devoid of reason.  Too many brilliant people from Thomas Aquinas to Blaise Paschal toiled diligently to simultaneously honor these two forces.  To view the two forces as mutually exclusive is to create a false dichotomy that dishonors or ignores too much history.

[57] Ayer, A.J.  (1963).  The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.  London, England:  MacMillan & Comp. Ltd.

[58] Harris, 19.

[59] Harris, 216.

[60] Harris, 223.

[61] Also, the Old Testament alone was written over several dynamic changes in Hebrew political life, like families coming together to form clans, and tribes becoming the government of their own provinces, to the kingdom uniting under one monarch, to a “divided monarchy,” to political rule by foreign invaders (e.g. Assyrians, Chaldeans/Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks).  This time could easily be defined as a time of many turbulent political changes.

[62] Burtt, E.A.  (1954).  The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science.  (Garden City, New York:  Doubleday Anchor Books).

[63] That the existence of religion is tolerated at all is a negative for Dawkins, Harris, and the other new atheists.  It is so prevalent a theme in the writing that giving a particular page reference is almost misleading.

[64] Dawkins, Richard.  (1989)  The Selfish Gene. Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press.

[65] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 331.

[66] Haught, 83.

[67] Paschal, Blaise.  Pensees.  Ed./commentary Peter Kreeft.  San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1993.

[68] Harris, 185-187.

[69] Harris, 14.

[70] Dawkins, 272-278.

[71] Darwin, Charles.  The Origin of Species By Means of The Preservation of Favoured Races In The Struggle For Life.  New York, New York:  Penguin Books, 1958.

[72] Lewis, C.S.  “Mere Christianity,” 11-13.

[73] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 11.

[74] Feyerabend, Paul.  (1988).  Against Method.  London, England:  Verso Publishing.

[75] One of Dawkins’s books is so titled.

[76] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 17-18.

[77] Melchert, 475.

[78] Harris, 204-221.