Before addressing Chris’ latest concerns, I will take a few moments to respond to a guest post that was made on ChoosingHats by ‘ZaoThanatoo’.

On Zao’s Thoughts:

I mentioned in several places throughout my posts in this series that there must be real caution taken by the theist with regard to arguments such as these, to not assume the conclusion false to show the conclusion false. Let’s quickly recap the argument in question:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

Now, it should be obvious that any objection to the argument which has as a component the denial of (7) is going to be fallacious. One cannot respond to this argument solely by saying, “God exists and he has morally sufficient reasons for permitting horrific suffering.’ Zao, however, extends my cautionary point into his own further analysis when he says:

Mitch contends that one must not assume that God exists (A) in order to disprove the above conclusion that God does not exist (~A).  This, he asserts, is question-begging.  However, for anyone wishing to criticize the conclusion, the alternative is to assume that God does not exist in order to argue that he does.  This is self-contradictory.  We must either assume God exists or God does not exist (A or ~A, Excluded Middle) in presenting our reasoning.  But assuming ~A to prove A is self-contradictory and assuming A to prove ~~A Mitch asserts is question-begging.

These are some strange assertions. If it’s the case that assuming that God does not exist in order to argue that he does is self-contradictory there is a real problem for argumentation in general, as assuming the negation of some proposition to prove that proposition is simply what is meant by “proof via contradiction” or reductio ad absurdum and it would be highly controversial for Zao to claim that instances of reductio are self-contradictory, yet that seems to be his suggestion. Further, it’s not clear why one need either assume that God exists or that she does not in analyzing the argument. This seems to entail that nobody who is agnostic with regards to the existence of God could ever analyze the argument, or that agnostics are committed to the claim that God does not exist, which is false. He appears to cite the “Law of Excluded Middle” as justification for this claim, but this seems confused. It may be the case that “God exists” is either true or false but this does not entail that one has to regard it as so. For example, the “Law of Excluded Middle” tells us that the proposition “Some man named Johnathan will ride a bicycle on November 21, 2014 and crash it into an Ice Cream Stand” is either true or false,  but this in no way entails that I must assume that the proposition is true nor assume that it is false. In short, nothing about the above argument begs the question. This should be clear, but it can be made clearer by formalizing the argument, if one wishes. If such is done, it will be evident that no premise is, nor has as a premise in its justification, the conclusion.

Zao also states:

I’m attempting to elevate the conversation by recognizing the epistemic role which properly basic beliefs or ultimate presuppositions (call them what you like) play in dealing with issues such as the problem of horrific suffering.

The talk about properly basic beliefs is quite confusing as it’s not relevant to the argument at all. I can only assume that when Zao speaks of “assuming” he’s not speaking of “assuming” in the logical sense, but rather in the epistemic sense. Of course, the fallacy of begging the question is a logical fallacy and so whatever might be going on with my epistemology it does not impact the logic of the argument. That is, even if I do believe that God does not exist, that does not make my giving the above argument question begging. Also, I have noticed a general trend amongst presuppositionalists to not only assume a sort of foundationalist epistemology, but to even assume others are foundationalists! How can I have properly basic beliefs or ultimate presuppositions if I think foundationalism is false? This isn’t an immediately relevant thought, but it’s interesting enough to flag.

Zao continues:

In Premise 1 we are told “Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.”  Let’s break this down quickly for definitional purposes.  We’ll take “finite persons” to be, well, finite persons.  Finite persons who “ever more fully experience the reality of God” are people living life.  Every day every finite person existing ever more fully experiences the reality of God in various ways and to varying degrees, but every aspect of life is an experience of God in one way or another.  “Realizing their deepest good” means simply that they glorify God; and one may glorify God through either salvation or judgment.

So while Mitch’s definition is good, it is incomplete, as he stated: “…Indeed such an experience of God’s reality might manifest itself in different ways to different persons.”  Indeed, some people may realize their “deepest good” (glorifying God) through horrific suffering under the judgment of God for their sins.  So, given the above definitions, Premise 2 is false since certain persons glorify God most fully by suffering horrifically under judgment for their sins; and preventing that category of people from suffering would prevent them from “realizing their deepest good.”

Here, unfortunately, Zao misconstrues the argument. The finite persons who “ever more fully experience the reality of God” are not people living life simpliciter. They are the people who believe they are in a mutually interactive relationship with God of the sort to which theists commonly attest. This is a stipulative definition and I could have perhaps made it clearer, but this is one example of why I dislike long discussions pertaining to a brief survey article of some argument, there are things which get left out or overlooked that aren’t so left out or overlooked in the primary source. But, moving on, Zao is also mistaken about what it means to “realize one’s deepest good.” If you note premise (1) it’s explicitly defining what it means to realize one’s deepest good, and it means to ever more fully experience the reality of God. The rest of Zao’s response in its current form can be overlooked since it’s simply not relevant. Zao has, perhaps unintentionally, strawmanned the argument from Horrific Suffering.

On Chris’ Thoughts:

In Chris’ recent response he begins to steer the discussion in a different direction. He states:

Mitch claims that, “In the background of the argument is the question ‘What would a perfect being do?’” However, the argument pertains to God and not necessarily a “perfect being,” thus insofar as a question like this is in the background of the argument, the question is, “What would God do?” If the Christian concept of God is in view then it is the Christian concept of God which must be evaluated in terms of what the Christian God would do. Otherwise the argument simply does not pertain to the Christian God.

The argument does take the term God to refer to a perfect personal being and insofar as Chris might propose that the Christian God is not a perfect personal being, his conception of God evades the force of the argument. I didn’t make this fact explicit in the opening post for a few reasons: the first post was never intended to be exhaustive and the position that God is not a perfect being is a minority position in the philosophy of religion, to the best of my knowledge. With that said, I do know of a recently published paper which seeks to argue against the claim that “If God exists, God is perfect” though the title escapes me at the time of writing (e-mail me if you really want to know). With that said, there are a couple of options (at least that I can foresee at this very moment) along this road of objection. One can argue against any argumentation which seeks to establish that fact, obviously. Or one can argue for the proposition, “If God exists, God is imperfect.” Also, one claim that the attributes which I’ve argued would belong to a perfect being in fact would not. We can explore Chris’ article to see which, if any, of these routes are explored.

Firstly, it’s important to note that Chris presents some citations which seek to argue against the Ontological Argument. They don’t accurately address this argument however since no appeal has been made to God being that which none greater can be conceived. For that reason, a lot of what follows will be slightly misdirected but I will respond to what I think can be redirected appropriately. Chris first cites Van Til:

[W]e should be careful when we say that God is the being than whom none higher can be thought. If we take the highest being of which we can think, in the sense of have a concept of, and attribute to it actual existence, we do not have the biblical notion of God. God is not the reality that corresponds to the highest concept that man, considered as an independent being, can think. Man cannot think an absolute self-contained being; that is, he cannot have a concept of it in the ordinary sense of the term. God is infinitely higher than the highest being of which he can form a concept…When we speak of our concept or notion of God, we should be fully aware that by that concept we have an analogical reproduction of the notion that God has of himself. (Quoted in Bahnsen, Analysis, 634)

This quotation particularly misses the mark, but it can be illustrative. Van Til is arguing against the claim that God is the greatest conceivable being on the basis that no matter how great a being human persons can conceive, God is infinitely greater. Based on this quotation, one might want to respond to Van Til by saying that God is at least the greatest conceivable being or God is no lesser than the greatest conceivable being. Both of these options satisfy the above criticisms of Van Til and allow for one to still run an Ontological Argument, albeit of a different flavor. How is this relevant to the Argument from Horrific Suffering? Well, if the objection is that no matter how many great things I think being perfect would entail my list will never be exhaustive, we can absorb the objection by simply replying that while this may be true, being perfect could not be anything less. That is, perhaps my reflections lead me to say of God that, as a perfect being, she is perfectly loving and perfectly compassionate. I should not claim to therefore have exhausted God’s attributes, but what I can claim is that any further property ascribed to God such that God’s perfection increases will add to and not take away from those about which I have managed to think. Perhaps Bahnsen is in agreement when he states:

However, God has also revealed that He is much greater than anything that we can finitely imagine. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (without our thoughts being false or misleading). (Bahnsen, Analysis, 634, n.163)

The key thing to notice here is that it is said God is much greater than anything we imagine. Greater, not worse.

Chris continues:

Recall that [Van Til] claims, “When we speak of our concept or notion of God, we should be fully aware that by that concept we have an analogical reproduction of the notion that God has of himself.” What Van Til is saying is that our concept of God  is God’s concept of God. Now this in and of itself is rather interesting, for surely no one should expect a Christian, which I would at the moment say that I am, to accept a man’s concept of God over God’s concept of God, but that is precisely what Mitch is asking us to do.

Let us keep in mind that Chris can only non-question-beggingly assert that God has a concept of God if it is non-question-begging to assert that God exists. In order for this assertion to be non-question begging, he has to mean by God something other than what the argument means by God; something other than a perfect personal being, since he has not yet argued that any of my ascriptions are false. He has suggested that my ascriptions are inexhaustive but that is of no consequence to the argument unless there is a necessary property of God such that its existence renders the operation of some other property limited. It’s yet to be seen if a suggestion such as this is even coherent, or if coherent, can apply to the ascriptions made in the previous articles.

Chris goes on to cite a previous quote of mine, I will quote the relevant portion:

Many of my discussions with Christians have resulted in their looking at the Christian story and saying that particular conceptual analyses don’t line up with the Biblical conception of God. As I’ve said before, so long as our conceptual analyses are reasonable, so much the worse for the Biblical conception of God; if a God did exist, it would not be that one.

This follows from taking the proposition “If God exists, God is a perfect personal being” to be true. If that is indeed true (and I hope to present my argumentation for this in a future article), and if the Christian story presents a depiction of God that is not a perfect personal being, so much the worse for that depiction. I hope my statement is clearer now, in light of what’s been discussed so far.

Towards the end of his response, Chris calls into question some of the ascriptions I’ve made and while I don’t see an argument against them in what he’s written, there are some questions worth answering. Chris says:

Any problems with Mitch applying his concept of “compassion” to the Christian God are now apparent as well. He writes, “Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings.” But why does Mitch grant that God is compassionate at all? Perhaps some god is the very opposite of compassionate even in Mitch’s understanding of the matter. How would the argument then apply to that god?

Taking God to be a perfect personal being, we can reason as to the properties such a being would have by analyzing out the great-making properties of human persons; the great-making properties of personhood. That is, human beings possess the properties of being loving, being compassionate and being generous. These properties differ in quality from, say, the property of being deceptive or the property of being violent such that the properties of being loving, compassionate and generous can be called great-making properties. There are a lot of ways in which we can hash out this idea, but for the purposes of this article we can say that they are the properties which are intrinsically better to have than not, the properties we regard as great-making in that the more of these a person has, the more we speak of their excellence as a person in the positive sense. Now God, if the perfect personal being, will possess all the great-making properties of human persons to their maximal (highest possible) degree and probably possess some great-making properties that human persons do not. It is because of this that we can perform a conceptual analysis of what love means, what compassion means and so on, and reason (even if inexhaustively) as to which properties a perfect personal being would have. Such reasoning in this case has led us to the conclusion that because of God’s perfect knowledge and compassion which entails a profound awareness and opposition (compassion is sympathetic opposition), she will know what it is to suffer horrifically and not permit such a state if unnecessary for the deepest good of human persons. Again, since it is unnecessary for the deepest good of human persons, the existence of horrific suffering shows us there is no God.

So, in summation, and to be precise, the argument demonstrates that there exists no perfect personal being. It may turn out that this argument does not impact Chris in any way because as a Calvinist, he already agrees that there exists no perfect personal being. If this is the case, so be it, as the argument was never addressed to Chris directly (though his responses are always welcome). Certainly many people do believe in a perfect personal being and this argument has much discussion to provide amongst them. Alternatively, Chris might argue against the properties I’ve associated with perfection; arguments which I imagine will be quite interesting given how obvious the analyses seem upon reflection. At any rate, having the discussion head in this direction (if it continues) could serve to be very beneficial in understanding not only this argument, but other important issues in the philosophy of religion.

Note: For those who may not know, the article image is a reference to the old Christian poem entitled “Footsteps” which tells the story of a person told by God that they never walk alone, when God is asked then why at times there is only one set of footprints she remarks that those are the times in which she carried the person. I think this, though a story, can help to demonstrate what perfect compassion might look like.

At this point, Chris is still challenging premise (4) of the following argument:

Horrific Suffering (def.) = that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.

(1) Necessarily, if God exists, finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God realize their deepest good.

(2) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who ever more fully experience the reality of God.

(3) Necessarily, if God exists, the prevention of horrific suffering does not prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good. (from 1, 2)

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

(5) Necessarily, if God exists, there is no horrific suffering. (from 3, 4)

(6) There is horrific suffering.

(7) God does not exist (from 5, 6)

In my most recent article I outlined reasons for thinking (4) is true. I want to bring out some underlying strands of the debate, that will simultaneously address Chris’ concerns.

In the background of the argument is the question “What would a perfect being do?” In answering this question, one engages in conceptual analysis (not just this question, practically all of Western philosophy involves conceptual analysis). In analyzing concepts, we take something like the concept of perfect love, for example, and ask the stereotypical philosopher question of what it means to be perfectly loving. It is the hope of the philosopher that such analysis leads to deeper understandings of the concepts in question. In my last article, I presented a series of considerations for thinking that a perfect being would only permit the existence of horrific suffering if it’s prevention would prevent finite persons from realizing their deepest goods. Forgive me for quoting at length:

Let us delve further, take the state in question, that of Horrific Suffering, defined as being “that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.” States such as this are often the most difficult times in people’s lives, one need only speak with someone who has gone through such turmoil to realize this fact. God, however, would not even need to speak with these persons. The perfection of God surely entails an omniscience that encompasses all kinds of knowledge. This includes a perfect knowledge of how particular states feel to her created beings and thus, complete insider knowledge of the experiences of every created being. Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings. Granting that God stands in maximal opposition to the experience of Horrific Suffering it is surely the case, entailed by our aforementioned analyses, that God allows persons to suffer horrifically only if such suffering is a necessary condition of these persons realizing their deepest good; a relationship with the Creator that will unfold throughout all of eternity, the only thing that God’s perfect nature will deem enough. In fact, even if the existence of Horrific Suffering were a necessary condition of some very-good-other-goods such that they, perhaps in quantity, “outweighed” the non-good state of Horrific Suffering, our above analyses entail that permitting such suffering is still inconsistent with the divine nature!

Given the analysis of the concepts in question, the conclusion to which we are led certainly seems to be that (4) is true. That is, reasoning about what these particular things mean leads us to a conclusion about what a being with those properties would do.

Thus, when Chris suggests that God has morally sufficient reasons for causing or permitting horrific suffering, a few things are occurring. Firstly, he begs the question against the conclusion drawn from the conceptual analysis. He assumes that there can be a reason such that in light of this reason God would permit the existence of horrific suffering even in cases where the deepest good of persons does not have such suffering as a necessary condition. But, our conceptual analysis leads us to the conclusion that there is no such reason; God would not do such a thing. Chris cannot merely assume the failure of the conceptual analysis, he has to argue for it.

The most relevant portion of Chris’ response, is, I think the following:

Is the thought that one’s life is not worth living really something which God is “maximally opposed to?” Many of us have in fact had such thoughts and have subsequently gotten over it. Some people do not get over it. If it is true that Hitler committed suicide then it is likely the case that he did not get over it. But is God “maximally opposed” to Hitler’s horrific suffering or the possible result of him taking his own life? What about the well-to-do millionaire who decides after losing a few million that his life is no longer worth living by virtue of the fact of him losing those few million?

Well, if our conceptual analysis is reasonable (which I contend it is) then the affirmative is a reasonable conclusion to draw. I’m not sure if Chris has ever gone through such a period, but at the very least he probably knows of someone who has gone through such a period and even many who have “gotten over it” regard it as the worst point in their lives. The relevant portion of the analysis is the feeling involved with horrific suffering, not the antecedent conditions. We are reasoning about a being that is perfectly compassionate and because of her omniscience shares in our experience. Whether Hitler, a millionaire, or whomever, the experience of Horrific Suffering does not change in content. Chris has even admitted this to an extent, in pointing out that it may have led to Hitler taking his life. It is easy for us, I think, to scoff at people like Hitler and say that they deserve it or what not, but we should not assume that a perfect being, if she exists, shares our shortcomings in this respect; we many not be perfectly compassionate, but surely she is.

So, has Chris offered any reasons to think that the above conceptual analysis is in some way misguided? Not directly. Directly, he’s only begged the question against it by speaking of “morally sufficient reasons for God to permit horrific suffering.” There are hints of a better reply in his responses however, namely, that of “skeptical theism.” A treatment of that topic would require another article, so for now I will only flag it as a possible course of objection for Chris.

Something that I’ve mentioned before seems relevant yet again. Whereas I am asking the question, “What would a perfect being do?” Chris seems to be asking the question, “What has a perfect being done?” The difference is subtle, yet illuminating in how both of us approach this, and probably many other issues in the philosophy of religion. There is some initial question as to whether or not the being Bolt calls “God” possesses the properties of perfection I’ve ascribed to the term. There is a tendency that I have experienced in my many discussions with Christian people to assume that this world is the type of world that God would create, since God did create it. But if our conceptual analyses lead us to discover that this world is not the world that a God would create as I think is the case here, we are left with the conclusion that there is no such being. Many of my discussions with Christians have resulted in their looking at the Christian story and saying that particular conceptual analyses don’t line up with the Biblical conception of God. As I’ve said before, so long as our conceptual analyses are reasonable, so much the worse for the Biblical conception of God; if a God did exist, it would not be that one. While I think there are hints of this confusion occurring in Chris’ thought, I would like to thank him for not, as many confusedly and amateurishly have, done something like throw the book of Job at me or cite various parables from the Bible. It should be clear how to do so in this context, would only be to beg the question even further.

So, our conceptual analysis seems to lead us to the conclusion that this world, with it’s occurrences of horrific suffering, is not the world that a perfect being would create and thus, there is no God.

Chris’ most recent response chooses to set aside his initial two objections and focus in on premise (4) of the argument:

(4) Necessarily, if God exists, there is horrific suffering only if its prevention would prevent there being finite persons who realize their deepest good.

His main complaint is that no reason is given for accepting the premise. This isn’t true, in my response I provided one such justification:

Looking at an analogous instance, it seems obvious that something has gone wrong when we are saying of the parent that they are acting in accordance with anything we might remotely pick out as being “good” when they cause or permit their beloved child to suffer horrifically when the prevention of that suffering would occur at no loss to the beloved!

This is a piece of prima facie justification and whether or not Chris finds it persuasive, it is there. I will, however, take this opportunity to say much more. If there is anything that perfect goodness is not, it is the causing or permitting of non-good states to obtain for the sake of their being non-good states. What might it mean to say of some person that they are perfectly good and without repercussion can avoid the causing or permitting of some other person their experience of pain (for example), but causes or permits such pain anyhow? It is difficult to make sense of in the same way it is difficult to make sense of there being some person such that they are omniscient, and yet they do not know my name. Whatever is a property of the person in question, it surely isn’t omniscience, and in our previous example, it surely isn’t anything close to perfect goodness. We can reason then that if a perfectly good being causes or permits the obtaining of some non-good states, her doing so must in some way be necessary for some greater good state. Surely a perfectly good being, if bringing about non-good states, does so reluctantly, takes no pleasure in doing so, and would avoid doing so if at all possible without sacrificing one of the greater goods.

Good parents exemplify this in their interactions with their children. They may take their child to the dentist, permitting the obtaining of the non-good state of painful tooth extraction, taking no pleasure in the non-good state obtaining, but permitting it because it leads to the good state of having a healthy mouth. In the above example, the parents seem justified in their permitting their child to suffer because of the upcoming greater good for the child. As Chris notes, if God exists, her being our creator grants her a particular set of rights over our lives that exceeds even that of parent and child. Given such authority, however, we are not to neglect God’s perfect goodness which would ensure that the instances of non-good states are justified in some way. Let us delve further, take the state in question, that of Horrific Suffering, defined as being “that most awe-full form of suffering that gives the victim and/or the perpetrator a prima facie reason to think that his or her life is not worth living.” States such as this are often the most difficult times in people’s lives, one need only speak with someone who has gone through such turmoil to realize this fact. God, however, would not even need to speak with these persons. The perfection of God surely entails an omniscience that encompasses all kinds of knowledge. This includes a perfect knowledge of how particular states feel to her created beings and thus, complete insider knowledge of the experiences of every created being. Granting that there can exist no being more compassionate than God, if she exists, this perfect compassion coupled with perfect knowledge of what it is to undergo Horrific Suffering entails that God is, as Schellenberg puts it, maximally opposed to these sufferings. Granting that God stands in maximal opposition to the experience of Horrific Suffering it is surely the case, entailed by our aforementioned analyses, that God allows persons to suffer horrifically only if such suffering is a necessary condition of these persons realizing their deepest good; a relationship with the Creator that will unfold throughout all of eternity, the only thing that God’s perfect nature will deem enough. In fact, even if the existence of Horrific Suffering were a necessary condition of some very-good-other-goods such that they, perhaps in quantity, “outweighed” the non-good state of Horrific Suffering, our above analyses entail that permitting such suffering is still inconsistent with the divine nature!

Premise (4) is thus established and since, as argued in the earlier articles, Horrific Suffering exists and is not a necessary condition in the relevant way, it follows that God does not exist.

If you consider thoroughly the ramifications of a deity taking care of us, what you’ll find is an irresolvable logical conflict between God guaranteeing health and safety on one hand, and the motivation for of caregiving and interdependence on the other. That behavior happens to define human existence like none other.

So, God doesn’t allow people to suffer and die for specific reasons. He does so because it makes more sense than not that we live as mortals – i.e., with the vulnerability to suffering and death.

God allows suffering and tragedies in our world because only as flesh-and-blood mortals does life on Earth make any sense.

Bad things don’t always have to be understood as serving some greater purpose. However, immanent mortality, or the fact that anyone can suffer and die, is the primary ordering principle of human life. Our mortal vulnerability motivates the behavior that builds an important depth of experience to humanity – including the search for spiritual knowledge.

That’s why God allows us to suffer and die. We have to live as mortals.

In mortal life, there are many flaws and imperfections, but there are no definable or achievable qualities that could be called perfect.

One could say that life builds upon imperfections and frailty – forming immeasurable good out of the possibility of evil and suffering. Our mortal vulnerability motivates caregiving and social organization – the behavior that anchors all culture and civilization. Everything we get from permanent culture – knowledge, traditions, institutions, identity, the structure of families, societies, the civil order of nations, our sense of worth or esteem for our place in them – we owe to the social stability of cooperative living and childrearing. We owe to the behavior compelled by the fact that anyone can suffer and die.

We suffer because the impassive forces that generate and sustain life also imperil it, and because no human could be perfect enough to be free of the potential for evil. But we’re members of families, cultures and civilizations because of our mortal interdependence and the need to guard against human flaws and natural peril.

The theodicy I’ve developed not only explains how mortality structures our existence, it shows why nothing else makes sense – especially and including a deity manipulating existence from the heavens to keep good people safe and healthy.

For God should not be regarded the same as a human bystander who has the means to avert tragedy but does not. (Otherwise, he is either not good or not powerful, the dilemma asserts.) God is the bystander to all tragedies everywhere and throughout time who, if he chose to make us safe himself, would change existence – and not for the better. That’s why I argue that it’s not just important, but essential that people address the dangers of the world instead of God.

Were God to ensure people’s health and safety (or, the health and safety of “good” people, “innocents,” etc.), or arrange that we never suffered too much, he would create a world without incentives or consequences. The result would be a profoundly different world, not a better one.

That’s because God couldn’t address evil by changing the outcomes of only the atheists’ favorite examples of manifestly un-Godly suffering. A just God couldn’t address suffering according to context, newsworthiness, historical significance or sensation unless he was only interested in public relations. Under God’s active stewardship, no earthquake would mean no natural hazards to life at all. No Holocaust could happen because there could be no murder. No tsunamis could threaten life because no one could drown. Precluding cancer could only be part of preventing any excruciating or deadly disease. And we couldn’t suffer or die from starvation or thirst because we couldn’t depend on any kind of sustenance.

Asking for a world in which God keeps innocents safe is asking for a world in which it’s unnecessary to raise children. It’s also asking for a world in which innocents don’t have to live cooperatively with others, work for a lifetime or organize socially at all. A world unburdened of compulsory parenting or work wouldn’t be a bad or evil place. But it certainly wouldn’t be our world “improved.” It’d be idle and more primitive than anything on our planet.

And if God as a rule made exceptions and intervened during times of distress, he would only turn the living incentives we have inside-out and encourage us to live in conditions that guaranteed good health. If our vulnerability to nature extended only as far as we understood it, the advance of knowledge would be hazardous. Likewise, children would be safer without parents. We’d be inclined to avoid fertile soil and water sources that made us hunger and thirst (and compelled us to work for food and water). Isolation from human assistance would distance us from suffering. And if we figured out that people who are physically trapped remained miraculously healthy until rescued, we’d know that one of the best ways to ensure the safety of those we care about would be to entomb them against their will.

It’s easy for atheists to cite incidents and kinds of suffering in isolation and note that God failed or fails to intervene to correct each one. What’s impossible for them for anyone to do is to put all those corrections together, with God creating, arranging, intervening, or whatever, and leave behind a sensible world. We live as mortals and are all able to suffer mortal consequences. Nothing else makes sense.

In fact, we make sense of our existence by giving it cultural form and meaning because we’re all mortal. God could create life and even sustain it, but it’s the living who endow it with value. And we’ve done so by taking care of children and with the social organization that bonds us to families and that forms cultures.

The better aspects of human life exist because health and safety are in the care of mortals and only mortals. It’s not fair to everyone, and the results of our failures and vulnerabilities can be gruesome. But on the one hand, who did anything to deserve a certain amount of life? The answer is no one, and that happens to be true whether a God exists or not.

There’s no divine plan that requires thousands to be crushed, trapped, stranded and killed by rubble. But there is a good reason why we must live as mortal flesh-and-bones, vulnerable to nature and other people.

It’s an essential and even defining fact of living that maintaining health, safety and life itself is our endeavor, and ours exclusively – not God’s responsibility, or ours with God as a backup. I call it the logic of living. It’s not theology, and it’s not even religious; it’s common sense, woven into the fabric of being. Flesh-and-bones is our responsibility. I believe that God concerns himself more with the soul within. It’s an order that works best for us.

What is sentimentally good is not always wise. So it would be with God safeguarding life and limb for a people whose existence is based on behavior meant to safeguard life and limb.

Our world is not perfect, but not because there’s no God or because there’s no good or omnipotent God. It’s not perfect because there’s no such thing as a perfect world.

Preliminary Discussion

                It is useful to begin by saying a brief bit on logic. Logic concerns itself with consequence, which has been referred to as truth-preservation. An analysis of consequence is performed by demonstrating the validity of arguments such that:

(Logical Consequence) Some conclusion C is a consequence[4] of a set of premises P iff in a case where all the premises of P are true, it is a case where C is true.

The “cases” referred to above are laid out by truth-conditions. Systems of logic provide truth-conditions for that which will be parsed through them[5], or rather, what will be a consequence of what. For example, I might provide the following condition (Where P and Q are the ‘things’[6] being parsed):

P ^ Q is true in some case iff P is true and Q is true in the same case.

In providing such a truth-condition I have enabled the system to demonstrate the validity of the following:

P ^ Q

_____

P

If P ^ Q is true then P is true, or in other words, P is a consequence of P ^ Q. The question is whether or not there are multiple ways to understand, or lay out, the aforementioned cases. Logical pluralism rejects the position[7] that there is only one way to determine whether or not some argument is formally valid, or put differently, that there is but one true logic[8].  It proposes instead that there are multiple ways of specifying cases (truth-conditions), all of which are true. If you were to ask the logical particularist whether some argument were valid he or she would maintain that there is only one answer to that question. The logical pluralist would reject that statement.

The Presuppositionalist’s Logical Laws[9]

                In much of the literature I have come across and in my discussions with presuppositionalists as they defend their thesis re logic they state that the non-believer cannot account[10] for the truth of the so-called Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) and the Law of Identity (LI). These titles denote particular propositions found in, at least, Classical Logic (let the following ‘P’s stand for any sentence letter or compound sentence:

LNC: ~(P ^ ~P)

LEM: (P v ~P)

LI: A <-> A

These propositions are tautologies under Classical Logic and while their being named “laws” by some; they possess no special status over any other tautology under Classical Logic, such as:

((A v B) ^ (A -> C) ^ (B -> C)) -> C

Tautologies are formulae which are always true in their systems by virtue of the logical rules, regardless of the truth-value assignment of some sentence letter or compound sentence. That is to say, the mere syntax of the system is sufficient for the truth of tautologies. As an example, take the LEM: (P v ~P) is always true because the logical rules for Classical Logic state that a disjunction is only false when both disjuncts are false and whatever truth-value assignment we give to P, one of the disjuncts in the LEM will be true (Classical Logic only has two truth values: T/F) and that is sufficient for the truth of the entire disjunction.

I suspect that the presuppositionalist will want to disagree with my statement above, that the logical rules of a system are sufficient for the truth of that system’s tautologies. The presuppositionalist will claim that the existence of God stands in some truth-making relation to the tautologies (and everything other truth the system parses). It seems abundantly clear, however, that the logical rules are enough. I suspect the presuppositionalist would posit God as a necessary and sufficient condition, in some fashion, to the truth of the LEM (for example, and to remain consistent).

I have heard two common expositions of the truth-making relationship between the existence of God and the LEM (or any other logical truth). One maintains that the LEM is a reflection of God’s nature. I do not know precisely what is meant by this particular suggestion. What does it mean to be a ‘reflection’ in this context? How is the LEM a reflection? What is it about God’s nature that causes the LEM to be reflected? The questions are numerous. The other suggestion is that the LEM (or any other logical truth) is a reflection of the way God thinks. Similar questions arise to this suggestion as well. In order to move the discussion forward, we can at least concede that both suggestions suggest that there is something about God that makes (in some way) the LEM true.

Concerns

                Now, recall logical pluralism once more and consider some ternary logic (a three-valued logic) in which the LEM comes out false. The LEM essentially states “either true or false” but ternary logic introduces some third value (depending on the system that value might be: indeterminate, irrelevant, unknown, etc.) and so regards the LEM false. This system of logic will have a different logical rules than Classical Logic, in many ways it is a different language as French is different to English. The logical pluralist wants to maintain that this system is fundamentally no ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than Classical Logic (though different systems may in different contexts be more ‘useful’). This system will also have tautologies which differ from those of Classical Logic and the pluralist will maintain that they are true tautologies, given the particular ternary system.

Let us assume, though it may be difficult to do, that the logical rules of this system are not sufficient conditions for the truth of some proposition which entails the falsehood of the LEM, and that the existence of God is a necessary and sufficient condition of the truth[11]. If we take the relationship between the existence of God and the truth of the proposition to have something to do with his nature or thinking, then it seems that there is something about God’s nature or thinking that is making the LEM true in one instance and making the LEM false in the other. That is, where under Classic Logic God is making (a) (P v ~P) true, under some ternary logic he is making (b) ~(P v ~P) true.

The two propositions initially seem to be contradictions of each other, but because they are arising out of different logics, they are essentially arising out of different languages. If no translator were present, I think it obvious that “I am hungry” does not contradict “Je n’ai pas faim.” A contradiction only seems to arise when we parse one sentence from some other language into whichever one we are using. So, if I translate “Je n’ai pas faim” and I see that it is the negation of “I am hungry”, now I have some contradiction where prior to the translation/integration, I merely had foreign symbols. So where (P v ~P) and ~(P v ~P) seem to be contradictory, I suggest that this is only the case if taken into a common language where both are expressed and where the rules of that language determine them to be in contradiction. We should not be misled, in our example of (a) and (b) both instances use the same symbols but essentially arise from different languages. So, (a) as expressed in Classical Logic is only contradicted by (b) if it too is expressed in Classical Logic and so on.

Now, continuing along with our assumption that the existence of God (in some way) is a necessary and sufficient condition of the truth of the aforementioned propositions in their respective systems if they are to be non-contradictory, it seems that they must be non-translated. But, focusing on God’s thoughts, what might it mean to say that God’s thoughts (or thinking) act as the truth-maker for the truth of both statements, but that he thinks them in a manner analogous to thinking a statement in French and thinking a statement in English and not knowing the translation[12]? Surely if the statement is translatable, God knows the translation. Put in another way, God in some way makes (a) true in Classical Logic and (b) true in some ternary logic. Assume that by translating (a) into the system of (b), (a) is rendered false and by translating (b) into the system of (a), (b) is rendered false. Something about God (presumably an unchangeable something, according to the Reformed tradition) in this example makes (a) true and makes it false, and likewise with (b). How is one to make sense of this?

Perhaps it is the case that God possesses a system of logic which he translates both (a) and (b) into, and this logic is such that the contradiction yielded by the aforementioned translation “does not matter”. This would be to suggest that God-Logic[13] is dialtheist in some sense, permitting of contradictions in a non-explosive manner. This God-Logic however will of course have its own logical rules, but continuing with our assumption these are insufficient for any of the truths yielded, the truth-maker will have to be something about God. Now we also have something about God that makes the LNC, after translation into God-Logic, both true and false. If this is true then the presuppositionalist explanation regarding what logic is, or how the existence of God relates (in a necessary way) to logic, becomes quite unparsimonious, on one hand leaving being quite mysterious and barely serving as an explanation, and on the other having to invoke a God-Logic which all ‘subsidiary’ logics depend on for coherence.

It renders the position far less plausible, I think, than accepting that the logical rules of various logic systems are the necessary and sufficient conditions for their respective logical truths and that each system generating propositions which may conflict only when translated into another system where the logical rules generate the confliction is not a problem.

Though, at this point, the presuppositionalist may just want to rid themselves of logical pluralism. They may admit to the existence of these other logical systems but deny that they are the one true logic. In this case, as presuppositional logical particularists it seems that they would suggest there exists only one system of logic that is true and something about God stands in a necessary and sufficient truth-making relation to the truths of this system. They might further suggest then that all of this talk about other logics generating contradictions when translated is simply not a problem because that is what we should expect if the other systems are wrong. The problem with this route, I think, is that we do not appear to have any way of knowing which system of logic is the one true logic! From the various presuppositional writings it sounds like the consensus amongst them would be that Classical Logic is the one true logic, but why must one accept this? It would seem then that all of the talk about the “laws” of logic, which are just tautologies of a particular system, is quite possibly irrelevant and incorrect if there exists one true logic. We are in an uncomfortable epistemic position, the very thing from which presuppositionalism promised us deliverance.

                Thusly, the common presuppositionalist argumentation regarding logic and God’s necessity hitherto has, I think, some explanatory work to undertake. It is currently far from convincing that one should reject the sufficiency of a system’s logical rules regarding the truth of some proposition arising from that system in favor of adopting the presuppositionalist view on the matter.

[2] ‘Experience’ should be taken very loosely.

[3] This list is not exhaustive, but is indicative of the usual discussions as per my experience.

[4] One can also make sense of the principle by replacing ‘consequence’ with ‘follows from’.

[5] Provided that what is parsed is capable of being expressed given the system.

[6] Most commonly a claim of some type

[7] Hereby referred to as logical-particularism

[8] The particularist will not deny the existence of other systems of logic any more than the religious particularist denies other religions; he or she will merely deny their truth.

[9] I find it a source of confusion that presuppositionalists only seem to refer to three particular tautologies of a particular system. I do not understand the restriction, but perhaps sake of simplicity plays a role.

[10] I cannot find a conceptual analysis of their usage of ‘account’ though it seems to mean a type of explanation.

[11] Again, that is to say it stands in some type of truth-making relation

[12] Assuming the translation will yield a contradiction.

[13] Thought of as an overarching logical system.

I focus on Christianity and homosexuality due to prominence and familiarity. What I say applies just as well to other anti-gay religious beliefs and other sexual identities (e.g. bisexuality, transexuality). I do not deal with them separately to avoid repeating myself.

Why there’s nothing bad about homosexuality

Equality should be presumed. It wasn’t the case that blacks or women needed to ‘prove themselves’ before society condescended to treat them fairly – it should have been like that in the first place. So those who think homosexuality is bad should explain what is bad about it.

There are three main strategies. First is that homosexuality leads to bad things. Second is that homosexuality is bad in itself. Finally homosexuality might be known to be bad through religious conviction.

Does homosexuality lead to bad things? There’s a huge volume of research done on what correlates with homosexuality; some bad, some good, and most indifferent. There are also problems of whether results in one cultural setting apply to another, and much of it is confounded by stress induced by societal homophobia and conflict between sexual preference and religious identity. Happily, experts have already waded through this quagmire on our behalf. Take gay parenting – as if homosexuals can raise children, there’s probably nothing too badly wrong with them.

Here’s an excerpt from an amicus curiae brief by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Council of Social Workers:

Indeed, the scientific research that has directly compared outcomes for children with gay and lesbian parents with outcomes for children with heterosexual parents has been remarkably consistent in showing that lesbian and gay parents are every bit as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents. Amici emphasize that the abilities of gay and lesbian persons as parents and the positive outcomes for their children are not areas where credible scientific researchers disagree. Statements by the leading associations of experts in this area reflect professional consensus that children raised by lesbian or gay parents do not differ in any important respects from those raised by heterosexual parents. No credible empirical research suggests otherwise.

Similar statements have been made by professional bodies representing child psychiatrists, family physicians, counsellors, psychotherapists, teachers, lawyers, and adoption agencies. This is not confined to the US – UK and Canadian psychiatric bodies say the same. In short, the people who actually know what they are talking about unanimously agree that homosexuals, far from being uniformly bad parents – or even sub-optimal parents – are just as good as heterosexual parents. Exactly the same story emerges if we look at other bad things homosexuality is meant to lead to: it doesn’t.

The argument wouldn’t work anyway. Pretend that all the experts are wrong, that there is some ‘endogenous malaise’ to homosexuality. So what? We should only object to those homosexuals who actually do these bad things (whatever they are), not the entire group ‘at risk’ of doing so. Even if homosexuals would be ‘better off straight’, their sexual preference isn’t a matter of choice. The question would be how these people could make the best of the sexuality they were given – lifelong celibacy or forcing themselves into heterosexual relationships would seldom be it. Even if the ‘facts’ are granted, they still aren’t good reasons.

So maybe something’s intrinsically wrong with it. What would that be?

Maybe it’s unnatural. But what ‘natural’ means or what’s bad about being unnatural are hard to fathom. In many ways, homosexuality is natural: it arises without outside interference, and it occurs in other species too. In this sense medical interventions are unnatural, but these aren’t bad things – unnaturalness has nothing to do with badness. A moralized conception of ‘natural’ is needed for the argument to get anywhere, but this begs the question: why takes moralized conception A, which rules out homosexuality, instead of moralized conception B, which doesn’t – save for a reason why homosexuality is bad in the first place?

Maybe homosexuals aren’t using sex the way it is supposed to. But there isn’t any ‘supposed to’ about it. Humans arose by evolution, which isn’t goal oriented: what happens to improve survival flourishes, what doesn’t dies out. Pace natural law theory, there isn’t a ‘supposed to’ stamped on biology itself, but rather a ‘just happens’. Sex is a good way of transmitting our genes forward in time, and that’s why our minds and bodies are wired towards it.

Homosexuality might be considered faulty wiring – having sex with your own gender isn’t a good way to reproduce. In evolutionary terms, it probably is counter-selective. But evolutionary advantage, like unnaturalness, has nothing to do with good or bad. Celibacy, monogamy and unconditional altruism might also be counter-selective, but they aren’t bad things.

The secular case against homosexuality is wrong. In many cases, it is doubly wrong: invalid arguments based on bad data. Although only touched upon, the case for homosexuality is overwhelming: it is vindicated both by the abject failure of these arguments and the (pretty normal, pretty positive) lives of homosexuals themselves. The reason why the vast majority of the irreligious think homosexuality isn’t bad is because – barring religious conviction – everything speaks obviously and powerfully in its favour. For all the insinuations, all the canards, and all the slurs you can dredge up against homosexuality, reality begs to differ.

As it happens, the ‘secular case’ is made by people who are actually religious. Seldom are anti-gay arguments penned by inquisitive Atheists forming their beliefs by free inquiry, but Christians trying to justify beliefs they are already committed to. The real issues are religious. Are religious convictions against homosexuality right, or at least rational?

How not to be a religious nutter

Assume God exists. Assume Christianity is true. Imagine yourself as a Christian. Say you know that there’s a mountain of evidence suggesting that homosexuality isn’t bad, yet your religious beliefs say it is bad. Which should you trust?

God cannot be gainsaid, but given how many slavers, terrorists and ethnic cleansers thought God was on their side, he is evidently misheard often. All sorts of silly (creationism, heliocentrism) and evil (slavery, segregationalism) ideas have been read into the Bible or endorsed by the church. Given Holy Scripture or Sacred Tradition track truth unreliably, you shouldn’t stick to them in the face of immense countervailing evidence.

To take the Bible (rather, your interpretation of the Bible) or Tradition (rather, your tradition) in the teeth of all the evidence suggesting they are mistaken requires exceptional confidence in their reliability: it is belief in them no matter what. But belief no matter what is crazy – if you are mistaken, nothing can rescue you from your error. And we know that mistakes have happened in the past – in the case of creationism and anti-miscegenation, they are still happening now.

The sane thing to do is adjust your religious convictions. If your reading of the Bible suggests God made the universe several thousand years ago and man was designed specifically whilst all of modern science suggests the universe kicked off fifteen billion years ago and man evolved, it is your reading of the Bible you should reject, not modern science. Likewise, if everything shows homosexuality is fine and only your reading of the Bible says otherwise, you should look for another interpretation congruent with ethical fact.

Christians willing to do this are often called a variety of nasty names by those who aren’t: that they are selling out to popular culture, that they’re willing to take social norms over Biblical wisdom, that they’re not really Christian. But they aren’t ‘not Christian’; they’re just ‘not crazy’. The ethical concerns that speak in favour of homosexuality are both overwhelming and consonant with a programme of liberation which has an excellent track record: it was right about slaves, and those who said God wanted some for servitude were wrong; it was right about sex, and those who said God wanted submissive women were wrong; it was right about race, and those who said God wanted black and white segregated were wrong. It is right about homosexuality, and those who say God wants gays to apologise for their relationships are wrong.

Where’s the problem? What’s the problem?

The arguments against homosexuality are rubbish. They are usually invalid, often are based on false data, and are in any case woefully insufficient to justify the ‘Christian position’ on homosexuality. Christians might try to sweep these beliefs under God’s carpet to relieve them of having to consider the issue on merit, but we have seen this can only be done by adopting the belief forming practises of a nutcase. So Christians opposed to homosexuality, for whatever reason, are being irrational – and are irrational whether or not Christianity is true or reasonable. But why is this bad?

Opposition to homosexuality fosters discrimination. Those who oppose homosexuality generally also oppose their unions being given equal recognition before the law, oppose homosexuals adopting children, and at least want to preserve their ability to discriminate. All of these are harmful, not only to the minority treated unjustly, but for wider society as well

Not all Christians who oppose homosexuality are like this. Some might endorse a robust divide between church and state, and so not want any differential recognition enshrined in law. Also, although they think homosexuality is bad, they don’t think homosexuals are worse than anyone else: homosexuals are sinners just like they, and would still be sinners regardless of gay sex being sinful. So where’s the problem here? Hate the sin; love the sinner, after all.

The problem is these beliefs are evil. Homosexuals are accused of suffering some mental or moral malaise; of being better off straight; that any romantic or sexual relationships they form are wrong; that the love they feel for their partner is a twisted, second rate, facsimile of the heterosexual ‘genuine article’; that they are unfit to bring up children. Alone, these are despicable. Together, they are a programme to attack, demean and castrate someone’s sexual identity. They are appalling even if they remain legally silent – and are toxic to a just and humane society.

An attack on an enemy of freedom

Not all Christians oppose homosexuality. These people should be praised – it isn’t easy being right when your religious community is wrong. But they remain a noble minority; worse, Christianity itself seems to drive the sexual prejudice expressed by most Christians. Those who aren’t Christians probably won’t care what damage this does to the Church, but everyone should care about the damage the Church’s attitudes have on society in general, and homosexuals in particular. What should we do about it?

Opposition to homosexuality should be attacked – it is the casus belli for a culture war. These beliefs should be silenced not just in the statute books, but in popular culture as well. The two main sources of homophobic sentiment in the public sphere are the far right and the clergy. Neither should be gagged by censorship, but drowned in contempt and ridicule. The laughter that greeted Nick Griffin’s ‘almost totally non-violent’ KKK should greet those who suggest the equally ridiculous ‘disorder’ of homosexuality. When religions are co-opted to shelter it, they should be attacked as well – the rainbow flag should be stuffed down the Church’s throat. Anti-gay sentiment should be recognised as irrational, immoral, and illicit for civilized society. We should all come out of the closet as gay rights activists.

Acknowledgements:

I thank Nathan Paylor and Nicholas Inglis for their criticism of earlier drafts and ideas.

The first objection Payton raises is as follows;

“What I consider to be the greatest weakness of Fedora’s assessment is its shameless association of the Bible and God; this assumption that the God of the Bible and the God of reality (indeed, of history) are of one mind.”

You may bring this up as a “weakness” of my article, but it’s arguments will still fall or stand on their own merits. This shows no weakness of my argument, it simply provides a scope within which it is limited. The core of the argument, sans examples perhaps, extend to the Islamic religion as well, among others. I admittedly have not researched the Muslim faith to the depth which I have the Christian faith (be it to a large extent or otherwise), and if I am wrong in saying it does extend to the Muslim faith, I apologize for my error. It is important to note, though, that this does not invalidate the argument, it merely limits its scope, albeit to one of the largest religions in the world today.

The second caveat Payton has with my article is shown in this quote.

“Now, I’m not sure if Fedora is getting at something Jesus actually said or forbade, as I’m not familiar with the story (maybe it doesn’t exist! I’m skeptical), but that’s beside the point.”

I was merely pointing out that, as far as my understanding of the crucifixion goes after my speaking with numerous theologians, some of whom had gone to college on the subject*, that Jesus was crucified to atone for our sins. This is, in essence, a sacrifice, which, as I stated, is unexpected in modern society. Payton continues with this quote.

“If Jesus did say such a thing, then I could say He was making a suggestion or teaching relative to those times.  In those days, such things were perhaps more understandable, I would not know.  In any case, such things are silly now, so we should consider whether this particular teaching is relative.”

If this is the case, then the original argument which my article was a response to falls apart, rendering my article unnecessary by default.

Another fault Payton finds within my article is raised is in the following quote.

“Who is right, Jesus or ‘modern society’?  Who is right, the God of the Bible, or “all sane humans”?…If he answers ‘modern society’, or ‘all sane humans’, hasn’t he begged the question in his article?”

Payton fails to recognize, this is the very point I am trying to make, the bedrock upon which my argument lies! The ethical facts which God follows and humans at least recognize to be true are different, and as such one of them must be wrong. As God is morally perfect, he must follow the correct ethical facts, making humanities incorrect, thus, the conclusion of my argument.

“From [1-7], the Judeo-Christian God cannot have revealed to Human beings a true, objective, perfect, set of ethical facts.”

I again quote Payton.

“The whole question of “Fact VS Metaphor” isn’t blasphemy.  A lot of the stories of God’s wrath are intended to teach people not to disobey Him.”

If I understand Payton correctly, he is essentially saying that the stories of the flood, etc. are simply meant to teach humans to fear God. This is a threat, plain and simple. Threats are considered grounds for legal conviction throughout the United States, among many other locations throughout the world. This is again an example of God’s behavior deviating from the ethical facts humans hold to be true.

The final counter-argument Payton raises is summarized in the following quotes,

“Christians hold it as a matter of fact that we are all sinners.  Secondly, we believe that all sinners deserve death,” and “Why is it that we complain that “bad things happen to good people”, when there are no good people?”

He is saying that the stories in the Bible are justified. As sinners, the humans whose deaths were chronicled in the Bible were justified. However, Jesus himself taught that sinners are to be forgiven, with such teachings as Matthew 18:21-22.

Matthew 18:21-22, “21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”

And yet, God himself does not follow this ethical law. And even so, how does this justify the grievances afflicted to Job? God himself offers Job much praise, and holds him in glowing admiration.

Job 1:8, “8 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

God explicitly states that Job 1) is blameless, 2) fears God, and 3) shuns evil. By Paytons own admission, someone who fits this criteria would not deserve the grievances inflicted upon him. If a government official decided to, for example, prove to a different country that Americans are tougher and did the same with an American citizen, equally praiseworthy, this act would be condemned. Is God allowed to do this simply because he is God? Does his nature as God make him exempt from objective ethical facts?

Other objections raised :

In my discussion of this article with fellow UrbanPhilosophy.net users I have come across a few things I may need to clarify. These are as follows.

1.) I am not saying that human beings follow these ethical facts, they simply recognize them to be truthful.

2.) Accepting the lesser of two evils would be included in this ethical code.

3.) Humans are obligated to follow these ethical facts, not made to.

Again, I appreciate Payton’s time and effort in replying to my article! I appreciate the criticisms, and I welcome criticisms to my reply, or to my original argument. That’s what we’re here for, right? Thanks again, and I look forward to any and all replies!

______

* these are included, but not limited to, several pastors, several theology instructors, and Christians of a more intellectual persuasion. If they are in error, I apologize.

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.

[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.

First I will examine this argument from Joshua Rasmussen[1]:

(1) Intrinsic properties that can be exemplified by something that has a cause are such that if any one were to begin to be exemplified, that beginning could have a cause.
(2) There can begin to be contingent (non-necessary) things.
(3) Being contingent is an intrinsic property.
(4) Some contingent things can have a cause.
(5) Therefore, there can be a cause of a beginning to the existence of contingent things [from (1) – (4)].
(6) If (5), then there is a Necessary Being.
(7) Therefore, there is a Necessary Being.

It should be noted here that this is not necessarily an argument for God, rather it is an argument for something which has causal power and cannot fail to exist. This argument employs a very weak causal principle – even weaker than the W-PSR. Rasmussen gives the following analogy to explain intrinsic properties being caused to begin to be exemplified:

Consider first the property of being an armchair. That property began to be exemplified when the first armchair was constructed, and of course, that beginning had a cause. Consider next an intrinsic property that has never been exemplified, but could be: being a fifteen-legged animal, say. It is plausible that if that property were to begin to be exemplified, that beginning could be caused: imagine an evolutionary process leading to the birth of the first fifteen-legged animal.

So considering this, (1) seems to work, at least for things such as “being blue” and “being rectangular”.

(2) and (4) seem so obvious, I do not feel that they need a defense. However, I will defend them if an objection arises. But what of (3)? Rasmussen explains intrinsic properties thus:

(I) p is intrinsic if there is no external relation r, such that (anyone who fully grasps p, thereby grasps r, and it is not necessary that if p is exemplified by an x, then x bears r to x or one of x’s parts).

An example of an intrinsic property would be mass; physical objects have mass no matter where they are, and no matter what conditions they are under. An objects’ mass always = x. Weight, however, is an extrinsic property. An objects’ weight will be X on earth, but may be Y somewhere else. So, it seems apparent that contingency is an intrinsic property. We are not contingent because of anything, we just are.

(5) of course follows from (1) – (4). (6) Follows from (5) because things can only be necessary or contingent, and something contingent cannot cause the beginning of the existence of contingent things; this thing would have to cause itself to do that. So we arrive at (7) There is a necessary Being. It should be noted here that this argument is very modest – the “Being” in the conclusion does not need to be God, or even something supernatural; this being could very well be entirely natural, as long as it is necessary.

Is God Coherent?

Given that the previous argument does not necessarily show there is a God, why do I think there is? The first step is to show that God is a coherent idea; that is, I must show that this being could possibly exist. I will start by explaining what I mean by “God”, and define His attributes:

God:

There exists a necessary being with properties including, but not necessarily limited to, perfect freedom, omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, who caused the beginning of the existence of contingent things, and who may or may not have created the universe.

Perfect Freedom:

If P does A freely, then no cause makes him do A. He is ultimately responsible for A being done; for nothing makes him make A be done. [...] An action, I suggest, is a free action if and only if the agent’s choosing to do that action, that is having the intention to produce the result of that action, has no full explanation—of any kind, whether of the kind described by scientific explanation or of the kind described by personal explanation. [...] But the suggestion that a man might see refraining from A as over all better than doing A, be subject to no non-rational influences inclining him in the direction of doing A and nevertheless do A, is incoherent. [...] it follows that a perfectly free agent will never do an action if he judges that over all it would be worse to do the action than to refrain from it; he will never do an action if he acknowledges overriding reasons for refraining from doing it. Similarly, he will always do an action if he acknowledges overriding reasons for doing it rather than for refraining from doing it, if he judges that doing it would be over all better than refraining from doing it.[2]

Omnipotence:

A person P is omnipotent at a time t if and only if he is able to bring about the existence of any logically contingent state of affairs x after t, the description of the occurrence of which does not entail that P did not bring it about at t, given that he does not believe that he has overriding reason for refraining from bringing about x.[2]

Omniscience:

A person P is omniscient at time t if and only if he knows every true proposition about t or an earlier time and every true proposition about a time later than t which is true of logical necessity or which he has overriding reason to make true, which it is logically possible that he entertains then.[2]

Perfect Goodness:

A person P is perfectly good if P is so constituted that he always does what there is overriding reason to do, and always refrains from doing what there is overriding reason for not doing.[2]

Given that moral judgements have truth values, an omniscient person will know them. His judgements about which actions are morally bad and which actions are morally good will be true judgements. Hence a perfectly free and omniscient being can never do actions that are morally bad, and will always do the best action, or an equal best action, or a best kind or an equal best kind of action (if there are these) [3]

Swinburne’s view is that God’s perfect freedom, omnipotence and omniscience entail his perfect goodness. That is, if X is omniscient and omnipotent, X will always know what the best action is to take, and will be able to take that action. Furthermore, X will know “I ought to take the best action”. So, as per his freedom, this will be an overriding reason to take that action, and thus He will.

First Cause:
It has already been shown that this being is the cause of the beginning of the existence of contingent things (see section I). But what of the universe; is this being the direct cause of the universe, or only indirectly, by virtue of causing contingent things? Well, I think that remains to be seen. This issue still seems to me to be explored further, as there are good arguments as to whether God is the direct cause of the universe on both sides.

Granting that all these properties are coherent, it follows that God is coherent; that is, He could exist.

Moving from A to B

So, two things have been established:
1) There exists some sort of necessary being.
2) The concept of God is coherent.

But are there reasons to think that the necessary being is God (that this being has the properties of God)? I again cite Rasmussen in support that God is the necessary being. He first introduces the concept of a gridscape[4]:

(1) Gridscape S =(def) For some concrete objects, the x’s, and some intrinsic properties and/or relations, the y’s, S is the state of affairs of the x’s instantiating the y’s.

That is, imagine four concrete objects represented as dots. These dots have circles attached to them, representing properties; and lines connecting them, representing relations. He then introduces a related concept:

(2) Wholly contingent gridscape S =(def) A gridscape all of whose properties and/or relations are contingently (not necessarily) instantiated by concrete objects in the gridscape.

He then introduces a causal principle:

Causal “x ((x is a wholly contingent gridscape) → ◊(x’s obtaining is causally explained)). {or} for any bunch of contingent, intrinsic properties or relations, their joint instantiation can be causally explained. For example, John’s jellybean being red can be causally explained.

Further on, he offers an argument for the omnipotence of the necessary being (N):

For any measurable [finite] attribute A, where A consists in having determinable D to degree µ, and any concrete object x that has A, there is some degree such that it is possible for x to have D to degree µ – e or µ + e.

That is, if we say a being has a finite amount of power, that being could have a little more or a little less power. This implies that having an attribute to a certain degree is contingent, because it could have been a slightly higher or slightly lower degree. Let us assume this is the case, and we have a gridscape containing some number of contingent objects, and the necessary being from section I. Let us also assume this being has finite power. If this is the case, then this property would be contingent, and we no longer have the necessary being we need to explain contingent things. So, N must be infinitely powerful.

Next he discusses free agency:

If N is not a personal agent, then if N brings about a state of affairs, N does so in virtue of exemplifying some property or properties, perhaps in combination with some law obtaining.

The idea behind this is that if N causes X, it did so either through free choice, or because it was a certain way/had certain properties. So, let’s imagine a gridscape again, this time one in which N is not a free agent. If this is the case, then N has “probability-fixing properties”; properties which will entail that there is a certain degree of probability that a wholly contingent gridscape G obtains. But let’s say that N has a property such that it creates a 0.2 probability of G obtaining. We again run into the same problem; it could be slightly higher or lower, and this leads to a wholly contingent gridscape.

Now, what of omniscience? Again, we run into the same problem:

If N is a personal agent, then N is capable of knowing at least something.

Let’s suppose that N has a finite degree of knowledge. Once again, N could have slightly more or slightly less knowledge, which leads to a wholly contingent gridscape.

Finally, what of perfect goodness? We have previously seen Swinburne’s view; that perfect goodness is entailed by God’s other attributes. However Rasmussen gives another argument:

Now suppose that N is finitely good (has finite degree of positive moral status) or finitely bad (has finite degree of negative moral status) or both. Suppose also that: There can be no causal explanation for N’s having the degree of positive or negative moral status that it has (had and will have).

Just as with the other attributes, we see that N could be slightly more or less morally praiseworthy. This leads to the conclusion that N must be either infinitely good, or infinitely bad. Rasmussen offers this in support of N being infinitely good:

N has at least some positive moral status: there is a situation in which N would freely bring about a good state of affairs.

This, combined with Swinburne’s thoughts on moral goodness, lays out a strong case for N being perfectly good.

Conclusion

So finally, we come to this:

1) There exists a necessary being.
2) This necessary being is, given its attributes, likely to be a being we may consider “God”.

Of course, much more may be said on this line of reasoning; it is quite complex and I have not even begun to explain all the details. I have not included any possible objections, or addressed the various atheistic arguments. However, I hope this brief summary will inspire further inquiry into my new-found belief in God.

_________

[1]Rasmussen, Joshua. “A New Argument For A Necessary Being.” Yale & UConn Graduate Conference (Feb 2009).

[2]Swinburne, Richard. The Coherence of Theism. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1993. Print.

[3]Swinburne, Richard. The Existence of God. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2004. Print.

[4]Rasmussen, Joshua. “From A Necessary Being to God.” International Journal of Philosophy of Religion. 66.1 (2009): 1-13. Print.

In response to Bolt’s opening post, I replied and Bolt has since authored his rebuttal. What follows will be a response to the issues he raises therein.

Liangzhi, Proper Function, and Selflessness

First, I will explain some more about li, qi, and liangzhi. To quote directly from Tien’s paper:

For most Neo-Confucians, li describes the way a thing or state of affairs ought to be. So when things or states of affairs are in accord with li, they are deemed “natural,” and when they are not, they are deemed “deviant.” All things possess all the li of the universe within them. In human beings, the li exist complete in the mind (xin). For Wang, though, the mind not only contains li, the mind is itself li.

The liangzhi is the mechanism by which one can come to know the li or the principle of all things. Liangzhi is both a cognitive and affective (thinking and feeling) faculty. The li serves as the principle which describes the way things ought to be. Every existing thing contains all of the li within and so li is completely existent within the mind and while the mind contains li it is also, itself, li. Birth endows all human beings with a perfect mind or xinzhibenti. The perfect mind does not come to knowing by thinking, but simply knows. Liangzhi is a faculty of this mind which discerns “flawlessly, naturally and spontaneously between right and wrong,” thus forming correct beliefs and correct affective responses. However, there is a problem of qi:

All things in the universe are a combination of li and qi. Qi is the stuff of which the universe is made. It exists in various grades of purity. Although all things possess all the li of the universe within them, because of the impurity of the qi of which they are composed, some li are obstructed, thereby accounting for the differences between things.

Just as all things possess all of the li of the universe, because of the qi that forms their composition some li are obstructed. However, human beings have the ability to purify the levels of qi within and in turn allow the li to “shine forth”. Internal manifestations of qi within human beings are self-centered desires. It is these desires, or subsequent states of mind that cause us to lose touch with our pure mind and liangzhi. That liangzhi is to operate effectively requires that the self-centered desires are eliminated. Thus, our minds while li, are corrupted by qi. But how then can we come to know things? Regarding proper function, one can be said to be able to discern knowledge when one is employing liangzhi at some time; that is, our beliefs are warranted when we come to them while employing liangzhi. But how may we do this when qi “blocks” the liangzhi?

The proper functioning of the mind is acquired through selflessness or the absence of self-centered desires. Self-centered in this context does not mean selfish, but is translated from si meaning “to make oneself the center of one’s world.” It can be said that being in a state of selflessness in order to employ liangzhi equates to being unselfconscious of personal agency. To form an analogy, we can say that in order for our beliefs to be warranted, we must polish (liangzhi) the dust (qi) off of a mirror, in order to see the reflection (li) clearly. This “polishing of the dust” is a cumulative process, we must first rid ourselves of self-centered thoughts one at a time; and each time we do, we become better equipped to do so with other self-centered thoughts in the future. Second, we must extend liangzhi to our everyday lives.

The means by which one achieves a state of selflessness is firstly through the rectification of thoughts. This is simply to purge one of the impurities of self-centeredness to permit the second stage of the extension of knowledge, which results in the attainment of warranted belief.  The rectification of thoughts or gewu explains that the mind is li and the proper place to discover li is in the mind and not in any outside world. In eliminating incorrect thoughts, one’s mind can function freely and being to operate properly. Gewu entails that once a single self-centered thought begins to stir, it must be cast out. As it is a continual effort, each individual success allows the liangzhi to operate more freely and the more freely the liangzhi is the more easily it can identify incorrect thoughts and eliminate them. As such, when one eliminates some self-centered desire relevant to a particular belief, one attains an affective state of selflessness in relation to that belief and the liangzhi constitutes a properly functioning cognitive-affective faculty relative to that belief. This is, in effect, polishing the mirror to reflect the images before it.

Further, there is the additional criterion of the extension of knowledge. Succinctly, this is to extend the liangzhi to matters of everyday life. It is the difference between knowing “how” and knowing “that.” One cannot extend the liangzhi if they are not in an affective state of selflessness to some specific belief which would prevent one from attaining an affective state of action which stands as a necessary condition for true belief to constitute warranted knowledge. In some instances self-centered desires hinder the liangzhi from extending and the effective way of unearthing one’s incorrect thoughts are by attempts at such extension. “When the attempted extension fails, the subject will then be in a much better position to identify the relevant self-centered desires, and when they are identifies, she will be forced to confront them.” Upon doing so, extension of the liangzhi will be possible. That is, failure to extend one’s liangzhi reveals the relevant self-centered desires that need overcoming. As such, the rectification of thoughts and the extension of knowledge is a cyclical process. “The rectification of thoughts is the effort to extend knowledge. As one knows how to extend his knowledge, he also knows how to rectify thoughts. If he does not know how to rectify thoughts, it means he does not yet know how to extend his knowledge.” For those who have already eliminated all the self-centered desires and still cannot extend the liangzhi the issue of unity between knowledge and action arises. That is to say, the extension of liangzhi is merely acting upon the deliverances of the properly functioning liangzhi. Is it possible to know that filial piety involves caring for one’s parents in both winter and summer without actually doing so? One might have right beliefs about such but until one extends this otherwise lesser kind of knowledge, one will never truly “know.” Knowledge is the beginning of action, and action is the completion of knowledge.

And so, we can identify the Neo-Confucian theory of warrant as:

A belief p will have real warrant for a person S if and only if S is in an affective state appropriate to belief p, and p is produced in S by properly functioning cognitive-affective faculties in an appropriate cognitive affective environment for S’s kind of cognitive-affective faculties, according to a function successfully aimed at truth, and the degree of warrant p enjoys for S is directly proportional to the firmness with which S holds p.

Bolt’s Lack of Clarity

Bolt writes:

Recall that the reason atheistic epistemic justifications fail is because atheism does not provide for objective epistemic normativity which is required for propositional knowledge.

As evidenced by the italics in the above quote, Bolt clearly considers justification and normativity to be two different things. This statement seems counter to some things Bolt has said in his opening statement:

“Something like justification or warrant is required in order for someone to have propositional knowledge.”

“What is required for propositional knowledge is some sort of objective epistemic normativity.”

“Some type of epistemic warrant must be accounted for in Nocterro’s view of the world because of the need for warrant in knowledge.”

“The character and command of God and His having created us in His image and obligated us toward Him provides for the epistemic normativity necessary to right belief.”

“Epistemic warrant is in some sense necessary for human intelligibility yet it is foreign to an atheistic worldview while the Christian worldview provides for epistemic warrant. “

Bolt, in his most recent response, claims that atheistic epistemic justifications fail because atheism does not provide for objective epistemic normativity. However, as evidenced by the quotes above from his opening post, he uses the terms “justification”, “warrant”, and “normativity” interchangeably. So I must wonder, what is he asking the atheist to provide? In fact, I must wonder this same thing overall. I do not think Chris has been at all detailed enough in describing his worldview and how it provides warrant/normativity, or in stating what it is the atheist needs to do in order to effectively argue against his position. Furthermore, Bolt states in his response that:

Nocterro allegedly provides a brief summary of Plantinga’s position on epistemic justification which I do not adhere to and did not bring up in my opening statement.

Firstly, I am not sure what Bolt means here by “allegedly”; I must ask him to clarify his choice of words. Bolt thinks I am assuming that Plantinga’s position is his position as well. However, this is not the case. There are two reasons why I chose to discuss Plantinga’s view on warrant. The first is that Bolt, in his opening statement, never went into detail on what the concept of warrant entailed. I was thus forced to go with the leading view in order to discuss the topic:

Perhaps the most prevalent view of warrant in contemporary philosophy is that of proper function, as employed comprehensively and famously by Alvin Plantinga.

The second reason has nothing to do with Bolt’s (as yet explained) account for warrant, but a possible atheistic account for warrant. I merely presented Plantinga’s view as background information, going on to quote Plantinga himself in defense of atheistic warrant:

Even if [the atheist] doesn’t think we human beings have been designed and created by a powerful and highly competent being who proposed to endow us with the ability to achieve true beliefs, he may nonetheless think of this idea as a convenient and useful fiction [...] he may say that our cognitive faculties are working properly when they are working in the way they would work if the theistic story were true. He may therefore treat this story the way corresponding stories are treated by some who accept ideal observer theories in ethics…

Perhaps in response to this, he writes, in the section previous to his quote above:

Finally, Nocterro believes that he can presuppose God in his reasoning without believing that God exists. Not only does the argument presented show that epistemic normativity is impossible on a view where God does not exist, but it is impossible to “presuppose God” without believing that God exists, so Nocterro fails in his attempt to escape the conclusion of the argument given the soundness of the argument.

I agree that it is impossible to presuppose God without believing that God exists. Plantinga’s quote above states that the atheist does *not* presuppose God (which would entail belief that He exists), but rather that he may take the idea to be “a convenient and useful fiction”. That is, the atheist may use the concept of God as a thought experiment, and nothing more. To conclude, I must ask Chris to clarify his views on a few things before this discussion can proceed any further:

1) What is warrant?

2) What is justification?

3) What is epistemic normativity?

Bolt’s Objections to Neo-Confucian Warrant

Bolt states:

Nocterro has not provided any explanation of how the liangzhi may have been designed to function as it is held to function as opposed to any other way.

This, however, strikes me as similar to asking why God is the way he is rather than other way. Do questions such as these really have answers? Surely they are brute facts that are unexplained by any external states of affairs.

Bolt further states:

The liangzhi must be the result of unintentional, undirected, non-human, non-divine, non-intelligent processes by which the liangzhi came to be or comes to be.

Or simply not a result of anything at all, similar to how God is not a result of any non-God thing. If what Bolt is hinting at here is a sort of evolutionary objection in that it seems odd that evolution would develop liangzhi, I think we can agree with him. Of course, under Neo-Confucianism the existence of a mind necessarily entails the existence of liangzhi so that insofar as we have an explanation as for why evolution would bring about a mind, we have thereby explained why there is liangzhi. That liangzhi is the type of faculty that it is seems to be merely a brute fact.

Bolt states:

Further, he implies through his use of terms like “ought” that li, while only a descriptive concept, is somehow normative. Indeed he states this outright but without any reason for doing so.

But the li is not only a descriptive concept, it is both descriptive and normative as outlined above: “…when things or states of affairs are in accord with li, they are deemed ‘natural,’ and when they are not, they are deemed ‘deviant.’” Bolt states:

… the question remains as to why the li should be preferred over qi anyway. Again, epistemic normativity is lacking in this view and there is no apparent reason why one is obligated to conform one’s thoughts to li to begin with.

This seems no different than asking why one would prefer or adjust their lives towards God over Satan? Bolt might answer that we should do so because God created us, but where is the principle that says if one creates another, we should adjust our lives towards them? Even if there were such a principle, why should one follow it rather than not? Perhaps Bolt would state that because God commands us to do so, but why should we listen to his commands rather than not? Bolt might state that we’ll be punished if we don’t, but why should we prefer non-punishment over punishment?  Of course, perhaps there is no obligation under Neo-Confucianism to conform to the li, or perhaps one should prefer the li because of the better lives that result in ridding one’s self of self-centered desires. The question seems to be importing standards from Bolt’s own view in examining Neo-Confucianism but he must not judge this system by his presuppositions to determine internal incoherence he must examine my system from within and there does not seem to be any necessity for this idea of “preference” that Bolt is introducing. Bolt states:

Some may think that I have already given Nocterro too much, for while Christianity is a revelatory worldview, Neo-Confucianism is not. There are questions concerning how anyone comes to know these sort of claims concerning liangzhi and li and qi to begin with. Has Nocterro ‘discovered’ and ‘reached’ the liangzhi? If he has not, then he cannot claim to have come to know the liangzhi apart from the ‘authority’ of Wang (given that Wang reached it himself), but this is not bringing even one’s most basic thoughts into conformity with li because Wang was just another human being.

Given the discussion on the role of action, it would actually be impossible to count claims based on authority as knowledge. There must be that role of personal experience and affective states. This doesn’t, then, seem to be a problem. He further states:

The world of li and qi is not an appropriate cognitive environment for the operation of liangzhi since qi obstructs the operation of the liangzhi so that it does not function properly.

Of course the same might be said for his worldview as well, that the noetic influence of sin prevents any knowledge whatsoever. However, Bolt has the faculties of the so-called sensus divinatus as an alleged “way-out” of this problem, and so too has the Neo-Confucian a “way out” in the criteria previously outlined.

Conclusion

It does seem that Neo-Confucianism epistemology permits the ideas of warrant, proper function and normativity (as understood by traditional definitions, I now assume that Bolt is using them as such). Indeed, since this is true Bolt’s claim that only Christianity could do so is clearly false. Since this also forms the basis of his argument for the truth of Christianity, one is not required to accept his conclusion that Christianity is true and one need not accept on this basis that scripture is true, or that I presuppose God. If Bolt’s key argument for the Christian position has indeed failed, one must wonder by which means is he now establishing the truth of Christianity.