Last weekend the Global Atheist Convention rolled into Melbourne. Atheism has become, for at least some atheists, a movement. Increasingly atheists are gathering together in public places, as we've seen with the Washington DC Reason Rally and the Global Atheist Convention. To be fair, the Global Atheist Convention attracted 5,000 people which is reportedly a quarter of the [i]weekly[/i] attendance of [i]one[/i] Australian church so we shouldn't get carried away when talking about the levels of gathering. Nonetheless, it is increasing.
But, what to make of this? One thing that's interesting to note is how far the atheist movement is straying from pure atheism.
On the one hand, atheists like to claim that atheism commits them to nothing. They're just committed to denying the existence of God, or so they like to say. And this is entirely true on one level. But by reading about the atheist convention, and glancing over the twitter accounts of internet atheists and atheist groups, and you would get a vastly different impression!
They love talking about gay marriage and child abuse and terrorism and tax exemptions and AIDS in Africa. It's almost like they're really doing their best to muddy the waters and fool everyone into thinking that being an atheist is about joining a reactionary political movement.
Many thinking atheists do realise that terrorism and wars have more to do with politics, sociology and human nature than they do with religion. They realise that you cannot judge a belief system by it's worst proponents who distort the original message. They realise that churches primarily have a social purpose rather than a profit making intention, and thus cannot be labelled businesses in any meaningful sense, and nor should they be paying income tax.
But then the moronic atheists come along screaming "RELIGION IS EVIL! 9/11 shows the problems with irrational thinking and superstition. Ergo, all religion should be wiped out. Duh! Religions are just money making scams anyway. Pass the plate around and watch them all get RICH! Oh and btw, the important issue of Gay marriage is even more evidence of the problems religion is causing society! Jesus probably didn't even exist so why would anyone follow him!" .... and the calm reflection of the thinking atheists is drowned out amidst the ruckus.
Here are all these people claiming to be rational, evidence based thinkers and they come up with nonsense like this- emotional stupidity, reacting to religion with the very same intolerant irrationalism that they accuse religion of being about.
So in the end there's a tension that's caused by all of this. You've got human nature which encourages people to join social groups. The internet has brought the world together and we're seeing atheists come out of their basements and attend reason rallies and atheist conventions and the like. But, there must be some cognitive dissonance happening when some attendees hear the sorts of comments I wrote above - which seriously, are not too far away from the beliefs of many of those who are attending these atheist events- and then realise how utterly stupid they are. "Hang on, I thought we were supposed to be the rational, clear thinking ones! What's going on here!?".
I hope this will help them realise firstly that no single belief/lack of belief, movement or group has a monopoly on thinking. And secondly, that respectful discussion is better than ridicule. But, that might turn out to be a dream. Still, I can dream, can't I?
Friday, April 20, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Reason for Faith Festival Q n A Interaction: Resurrection
Tonight I attended a screening of the film Test of Faith, followed by a panel discussion. The event was part of the Reason for Faith festival, a response to the Global Atheist Convention backed by various Christian groups.
After the panel discussion, the audience had an opportunity to ask a question of the panellists. I asked a question which ended up being the most discussed question of the night! My question was responded to, and then I was asked to clarify, then it was discussed again, and finally Jack Scanlan responded to my question again in his closing remarks.
I listen to debates and panel discussions like this regularly, and it is easy to critique the views being expressed from the comfort of my computer, but it is more difficult with a microphone in a room full of people! I keenly await the recording to find out how articulate I was and whether it came out nearly as well as I wanted it to.
My question was asking for Scanlan's thoughts on looking at evidence through a broader lens, and specifically his thoughts on looking at the Resurrection argument accurately, as a Christian might understand it. That was what I was trying to get across. Scanlan is a molecular biology student, and was talking about the Resurrection. He cast the debate as a question of the reliability of historical documents vs the findings of science. His view, if I accurately heard it, was that biology has proven that people do not rise from the dead, and so you would need an unreasonable faith in historical documents to overcome this. On face value this view might appear compelling, but it misses the essence of the Christian claim. What biology tells us is that people don't rise from the dead via natural causes. But here's the issue: Christians aren't making the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead via natural causes. Christians claim that Jesus was raised from the dead by God. So I asked for his thoughts on this.
At first Scanlan fumbled through a response and concluded by saying that he would hope all evidence could be examined neutrally, without having our response impacted by prior beliefs. But this is clearly problematic, primarily because the world just doesn't work like that! Ideas do not exist in a vacuum. If you hear that someone you know has been arrested for a theft, you would be completely surprised....if said person was a well adjusted member of society. If, on the other hand, this person had a violent upbringing, an abusive father, and had a prior record of theft, then you wouldn't be very surprised at hearing about another crime, would you? So the point is this. Background evidence counts. As I wrote about previously, if God exists then miracles are possible. But if, like Graham Oppy, you believe that natural causes are all that exist, then miracles like a resurrection are inconceivably unlikely to you. So it's not as simple as looking at historical evidence on it's own. If you're determining the probability of what happened, you need to look at the big picture and cast your net a little wider. Or at the very least, you need to acknowledge the existence of your own presuppositions and their bearing on your response to the evidence. Scanlan had shown no respect or awareness of this vital issue, hence my question to him.
After clarifying my question (how effectively I'm not sure!) Dr Bruce Yabsley commented about the uniformity of nature. Modern science, going back to Newton, shows that nature is uniform, he said. This puts the sting in the tail of the argument that Resurrections simply do not happen. And this is a fair point. But unfortunatly Dr Yabsley didn't follow up those comments by acknowledging that the resurrection cannot be expected to conform to those regular patterns. If a resurrection did happen, then it happened once and at the command of a God who controls the universe and all the physical laws within it. It is not an event that we should expect would be repeated. The test tubes and telescopes may tell us that in every case ever recorded, Science shows that X, Y or Z happens this way or that way. That's all good and well. But if there is a lawgiver behind those laws then there is no reason why things cannot happen differently on one occasion. So again, the prior philosophical question of whether there is a God will have a direct bearing on how we interpret the historical evidence and the interaction of science with that historical evidence.
In his closing comment, Scanlan said that if there was good evidence for the Resurrection, he'd more easily believe that aliens did it than God. In one sense this response merely supported my argument about the need to understand your own presuppositions! Aliens, if they exist, are presumably natural entities rather than immaterial, supernatural beings, and, if you believe that life on other planets is probable (as Scanlan may or may not), then you might be inclined to believe this. For me, this idea is discounted by the fact that Jesus didn't ever mention "aliens". There is a historical context in which Jesus lived and into which he spoke, such that if there was good evidence, you would need to interpret the good evidence within that context. In short, there is historical evidence that Jesus was a Jew who claimed divinity as the Messiah appointed by God. Thus, if there was good evidence for a resurrection, you'd consider that God might have done it, rather than posulate an entity who has no prior connection with the context or the historical evidence whatsoever.
After the panel discussion, the audience had an opportunity to ask a question of the panellists. I asked a question which ended up being the most discussed question of the night! My question was responded to, and then I was asked to clarify, then it was discussed again, and finally Jack Scanlan responded to my question again in his closing remarks.
I listen to debates and panel discussions like this regularly, and it is easy to critique the views being expressed from the comfort of my computer, but it is more difficult with a microphone in a room full of people! I keenly await the recording to find out how articulate I was and whether it came out nearly as well as I wanted it to.
My question was asking for Scanlan's thoughts on looking at evidence through a broader lens, and specifically his thoughts on looking at the Resurrection argument accurately, as a Christian might understand it. That was what I was trying to get across. Scanlan is a molecular biology student, and was talking about the Resurrection. He cast the debate as a question of the reliability of historical documents vs the findings of science. His view, if I accurately heard it, was that biology has proven that people do not rise from the dead, and so you would need an unreasonable faith in historical documents to overcome this. On face value this view might appear compelling, but it misses the essence of the Christian claim. What biology tells us is that people don't rise from the dead via natural causes. But here's the issue: Christians aren't making the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead via natural causes. Christians claim that Jesus was raised from the dead by God. So I asked for his thoughts on this.
At first Scanlan fumbled through a response and concluded by saying that he would hope all evidence could be examined neutrally, without having our response impacted by prior beliefs. But this is clearly problematic, primarily because the world just doesn't work like that! Ideas do not exist in a vacuum. If you hear that someone you know has been arrested for a theft, you would be completely surprised....if said person was a well adjusted member of society. If, on the other hand, this person had a violent upbringing, an abusive father, and had a prior record of theft, then you wouldn't be very surprised at hearing about another crime, would you? So the point is this. Background evidence counts. As I wrote about previously, if God exists then miracles are possible. But if, like Graham Oppy, you believe that natural causes are all that exist, then miracles like a resurrection are inconceivably unlikely to you. So it's not as simple as looking at historical evidence on it's own. If you're determining the probability of what happened, you need to look at the big picture and cast your net a little wider. Or at the very least, you need to acknowledge the existence of your own presuppositions and their bearing on your response to the evidence. Scanlan had shown no respect or awareness of this vital issue, hence my question to him.
After clarifying my question (how effectively I'm not sure!) Dr Bruce Yabsley commented about the uniformity of nature. Modern science, going back to Newton, shows that nature is uniform, he said. This puts the sting in the tail of the argument that Resurrections simply do not happen. And this is a fair point. But unfortunatly Dr Yabsley didn't follow up those comments by acknowledging that the resurrection cannot be expected to conform to those regular patterns. If a resurrection did happen, then it happened once and at the command of a God who controls the universe and all the physical laws within it. It is not an event that we should expect would be repeated. The test tubes and telescopes may tell us that in every case ever recorded, Science shows that X, Y or Z happens this way or that way. That's all good and well. But if there is a lawgiver behind those laws then there is no reason why things cannot happen differently on one occasion. So again, the prior philosophical question of whether there is a God will have a direct bearing on how we interpret the historical evidence and the interaction of science with that historical evidence.
In his closing comment, Scanlan said that if there was good evidence for the Resurrection, he'd more easily believe that aliens did it than God. In one sense this response merely supported my argument about the need to understand your own presuppositions! Aliens, if they exist, are presumably natural entities rather than immaterial, supernatural beings, and, if you believe that life on other planets is probable (as Scanlan may or may not), then you might be inclined to believe this. For me, this idea is discounted by the fact that Jesus didn't ever mention "aliens". There is a historical context in which Jesus lived and into which he spoke, such that if there was good evidence, you would need to interpret the good evidence within that context. In short, there is historical evidence that Jesus was a Jew who claimed divinity as the Messiah appointed by God. Thus, if there was good evidence for a resurrection, you'd consider that God might have done it, rather than posulate an entity who has no prior connection with the context or the historical evidence whatsoever.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
How NOT to review a book
I love reading, as I've written about before, and I usually review the books I read on Amazon.
Two recent events have raised the issue of how NOT to criticise or review a book. I will use these two examples to illuminate this common error.
The first occurred on facebook. John Dickson wrote an article criticising Andrew Bolt's attempt at Biblical criticism, and then this article was linked on the Public Christianity facebook page. A guy named Dave Singer responded with this gem:
I note that John offers, as usual, NO evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the Gospels are true.
He may as well call Andrew Bolt an idiot for thinking the Phantom Menace contradicts The Empire Strikes Back.
I responded by pointing out that it's an error to judge an author by a standard that he never intended to meet. John Dickson's purpose wasn't to "provide evidence to support the claim that the Gospels are true", it was to show that the problems raised by Andrew Bolt aren't all that troubling at all. I also referred to Dickson's latest video where he talks about historical reasons to believe that the Resurrection accounts are historically plausible- 1. They're historically very early, 2. The testimony of women and 3. The conviction of knowledge (as opposed to belief) evidenced by the early followers.
Two recent events have raised the issue of how NOT to criticise or review a book. I will use these two examples to illuminate this common error.
The first occurred on facebook. John Dickson wrote an article criticising Andrew Bolt's attempt at Biblical criticism, and then this article was linked on the Public Christianity facebook page. A guy named Dave Singer responded with this gem:
I note that John offers, as usual, NO evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the Gospels are true.
He may as well call Andrew Bolt an idiot for thinking the Phantom Menace contradicts The Empire Strikes Back.
I responded by pointing out that it's an error to judge an author by a standard that he never intended to meet. John Dickson's purpose wasn't to "provide evidence to support the claim that the Gospels are true", it was to show that the problems raised by Andrew Bolt aren't all that troubling at all. I also referred to Dickson's latest video where he talks about historical reasons to believe that the Resurrection accounts are historically plausible- 1. They're historically very early, 2. The testimony of women and 3. The conviction of knowledge (as opposed to belief) evidenced by the early followers.
A second example occurred on Amazon.com. A review of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible was heavily critical of the book, on the basis that Smith's argument was "hoisted on it's own petard". The author of the review, S.D Parker, berated Smith because Smith apparently criticises the Bible for not being definitive enough, but Smith's own conclusions won't reach definitive agreement either! As I pointed out in response to Parker, Smith never intended for his own conclusions to reach definitive agreement! He clearly states that his views are merely some suggestions to get the discussion started on how to better approach the Bible, and not the final word. Further, Smith's argument was not against the Bible for not being definitive enough, it was against a particular view of the Bible (Biblicism) which implies the Bible should reach definitive agreement when it clearly doesn't! Big difference.
Smith devotes the second half of the book to arguing that the theology of the Bible does contain ambiguities (Chapter 6) and even the theological conclusions that we can reach are not entirely based on the Bible but are developed with later reflection and discussion (Chapter 7).
Parker was welcome to argue that Smith's suggestions don't work, but it was a simple error to criticise them for not being capable of reaching definitive conclusions. Smith never said they would! In fact quite the opposite. Not only did Parker misrepresent Smith's argument, but he judged Smith by a standard he never intended to meet.
It's interesting to note that Parker deleted that review the day after my response. The moral of the story here is that you can only judge a book by whether it sets out to do what it intended to achieve- NOT whether it achieved what YOU want it to achieve.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
The Rally for Nothing in Particular
Larry Taunton wonders what an atheist world would really be like.
But in comparison what is atheism and what is it's history?
It gets worse...
In a tweet he posted a day before the reason rally, Taunton issued a challenge.
The Reason Rally's stated purpose is to "promote secular values." Other than no God, I challenge atheists to name one of these "values."
As I've discussed before, it is reasonable to wonder whether there is even such thing as "secular values" or whether secularists are just hijacking values that were imported into modern day culture by Christianity and then claiming those values as their own.
It's also clear that many atheists have a rosy view of atheism and secularism, such that they fail to confront potential logical inferences arising from their own views, instead choosing to promote a version of secularism that is more in line with Christian thought. Julian Baggini is one such example. John Dickson's comment in his brilliant essay on religious violence, that I have quoted before, is worth repeating. In fact Dickson himself recently re-tweeted it.
Only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.
Christianity, whatever the faults of its adherents, has a rich intellectual tradition that has a comprehensive view of life. It has given rise to the West as we know it. Our laws, arts, governments, and the very framework of our thought find their meaning in Christianity. Take for example the central premise of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.”
As Indian philosopher and social reformer Vishal Mangalwadi points out, there is nothing self-evidential about the equality of men.
But in comparison what is atheism and what is it's history?
Atheism, by contrast, has no creed, no principles, no philosophy, and can give no guidance. It is but to have a settled disposition on a single question: is there a God?
As my friend the late atheist and journalist Christopher Hitchens conceded, “atheism is nothing in itself.”
That not withstanding, atheism does have a history—a bad history. By conservative estimates, the twentieth century, an experiment in secular governance, witnessed the deaths of more than 100 million people. That is more than all the religious wars in all previous centuries combined.
It gets worse...
Proponents of a society free from religious influence can point to no nation or civilization that was founded upon atheism that we might call even remotely good. The story of those regimes is well documented and may be summarized in a word—murderous.
What they can point to are secular societies that are still running off of their accumulated Christian capital. But beware. When the fumes in that tank are spent, tyranny cannot be far away.
In his farewell address, George Washington offered a sober warning: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” This he deduced without the benefit of seeing the twentieth century. The eighteenth, it seems, was enough.
In his farewell address, George Washington offered a sober warning: “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” This he deduced without the benefit of seeing the twentieth century. The eighteenth, it seems, was enough.
So as the rally for nothingness meets to celebrate, well, nothing in particular, reflect for a moment on the world they would give us. One need not imagine it. It has been done.
Larry Taunton, well said. In a tweet he posted a day before the reason rally, Taunton issued a challenge.
The Reason Rally's stated purpose is to "promote secular values." Other than no God, I challenge atheists to name one of these "values."
As I've discussed before, it is reasonable to wonder whether there is even such thing as "secular values" or whether secularists are just hijacking values that were imported into modern day culture by Christianity and then claiming those values as their own.
It's also clear that many atheists have a rosy view of atheism and secularism, such that they fail to confront potential logical inferences arising from their own views, instead choosing to promote a version of secularism that is more in line with Christian thought. Julian Baggini is one such example. John Dickson's comment in his brilliant essay on religious violence, that I have quoted before, is worth repeating. In fact Dickson himself recently re-tweeted it.
Only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Bolt and Dickson on Biblical contradictions and Historical Errors
Conservative political journalist Andrew Bolt ventures onto writing about the Bible and John Dickson responds.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Lewis's Trilemma
C.S Lewis's Trilemma is probably the most famous argument in Christian apologetics.
The argument is thus:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."[5]
The logic appears sound. It is hard to imagine someone going around claiming to be the Son of God, whilst just being a regular human male, unless they were either 1. totally deluded and suffering from seriously bad mental illness or 2. A complete liar.
But as with most arguments, the value of the argument depends on who it is addressed to and the underlying assumptions that are brought to the table.
The "trilemma" on it's own can only be addressed to people who already accept all of Jesus's teachings as being historical words that the historical Jesus actually spoke. In other words, the argument doesn't address the possibility that Jesus did exist but that he didnt say everything that was attributed to him OR that he didn't exist at all. Before you can use it, you need to either 1. assume or prove that Jesus made his various claims of divinity , or 2. you need to know that your audience already accepts this. Having said that, there are good historical reasons to suggest that Jesus did make claims to divinity- therefore once you've done that groundwork, then the argument may be put to use and could be effective to some degree, to a wider range of people than those who Lewis was originally addressing.
The argument is thus:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."[5]
The logic appears sound. It is hard to imagine someone going around claiming to be the Son of God, whilst just being a regular human male, unless they were either 1. totally deluded and suffering from seriously bad mental illness or 2. A complete liar.
But as with most arguments, the value of the argument depends on who it is addressed to and the underlying assumptions that are brought to the table.
The "trilemma" on it's own can only be addressed to people who already accept all of Jesus's teachings as being historical words that the historical Jesus actually spoke. In other words, the argument doesn't address the possibility that Jesus did exist but that he didnt say everything that was attributed to him OR that he didn't exist at all. Before you can use it, you need to either 1. assume or prove that Jesus made his various claims of divinity , or 2. you need to know that your audience already accepts this. Having said that, there are good historical reasons to suggest that Jesus did make claims to divinity- therefore once you've done that groundwork, then the argument may be put to use and could be effective to some degree, to a wider range of people than those who Lewis was originally addressing.
Lewis claims that people "often" say that Jesus was just a teacher, but his argument still isn't wholly effective even to that target audience. Many people in that category would have the objection that they simply can't accept any supernatural stuff- and that is why they stick to the moral teachings. I think that kind of objection requires philosophical arguments against naturalism per se, in addition to a historical argument such as the Trilemma. For someone who has a strong naturalist outlook that they bring to bear on the Jesus question, and who believes they have good independent reasons for believing naturalism, it is difficult to imagine them being convinced of Jesus's divinity merely by the Trilemma, even if they already accept the historicity of Jesus's claims to divinity. However in this instance, the Trilemma could form a part of an overall argument or set of arguments.
With the above qualifications in place, we can see that the Trilemma can have some value in showing that Christianity is reasonable.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Results of a survey on natural theological arguments
Results of a survey on natural theological arguments
Respondents were mostly professional philosophers and philosophy students.
Respondents were mostly professional philosophers and philosophy students.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Trends in Religious Epistemology
Ex-Apologist explains some trends in religious epistemology.
Historical examples of religious epistemology:
- Bayesianism and Inference to the Best Explanation
- Epistemic Externalism
Recent Trends:
- The epistemology of disagreement.
- Contextualism/pragmatic encroachment
- Phenomenal conservatism
- The epistemology of testimony
Historical examples of religious epistemology:
- Bayesianism and Inference to the Best Explanation
- Epistemic Externalism
Recent Trends:
- The epistemology of disagreement.
- Contextualism/pragmatic encroachment
- Phenomenal conservatism
- The epistemology of testimony
Book Review: Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, by Julian Baggini
Well delivered but incomplete and rosy: 2.5 stars.
Julian Baggini's Very Short Intro to Atheism is written with clarity. He states his views clearly and never leaves the reader in any question as to what he's arguing for. This is worth mentioning because it is actually no small feat. Further than this, Baggini structured the book effectively, both in terms of his big picture flow of the book and secondly by always stating his specific points and concluding each chapter with a summary of the arguments. These characteristics made the book easy to read. Secondly, he does an admirable job of making his subject matter accessible, and so he showed his capability of delivering within the spirit of the Very Short Introduction Series.
Baggini begins (Chapter 1) by explaining what atheism is. He paints atheism as a positive belief, and this sets the scene for the next few chapters as it allows him to justify and explain his atheism before completing the more negative task of arguing why religious belief is mistaken, which he doesn't do until Chapter 6. In Chapter 2, Baggini claims that strong evidence supports atheism but only weak evidence can support theism. He argues that human nature and consciousness are completely biological, and that this strongly supports the naturalist, and therefore atheist, view. He argues that naturalist explanations are incredibly successful and that "The class of unexplained phenomena is unlikely to contain anything that will come to be explained in supernatural terms". This is a wide reaching chapter, as Baggini makes further positive arguments before taking on the claim that atheism is a faith position, and arguing against those who would use Pascal's Wager to justify belief.
In Chapter 3, Baggini starts by arguing for the separation of morality and religion, saying that we shouldn't see them as inextricably linked. He explores three frameworks for understanding Godless morality, and draws insights from them all. Meaning and Purpose is the subject of Chapter 4, and it can be summarised by the statement "Life is what you make it". Chapter 5 sees Baggini trace atheism back to naturalists in the 6th century BCE, and then in it's modern form, from the enlightenment forwards as a wholesale belief system in the marketplace of ideas. In Chapter 6 he turns to the deconstruction of the justification for religious belief, as he considers the merits of arguments for God's existence. In Chapter 7 he concludes by discussing humanism and praising the realism of atheism as a means of facing the world.
So, why only 2.5 stars? It's because Baggini's book is both incomplete and overly rosy. He admits at the start of Chapter 7 the fact that it's inevitable that much will be left out, given the brevity of the book (interestingly, this book is much shorter than many of the others in the VSI series- I just received 8 and this was the shortest). I understand this and so admittedly it must be factored in as I pin Baggini down on my charge of incompleteness.
In the earlier chapters, I found myself frustrated that Baggini didn't even mention any of the best anti naturalist arguments. Given his view that naturalism justifies atheism, this was disappointing. I was also dismayed with his lack of discussion on the point that many religious believers and religious belief systems are completely comfortable with naturalist explanations (and the different, but related point that many religious academics and philosophers of science believe God provides a better justification for the entire scientific enterprise than does naturalism), and thus that there's significant disagreement about whether many of Baggini's points provide much support for atheism at all, let alone strong support. It may be fair for Baggini to claim that space contraints kept him from responding to objections, and that he was simply trying to put forward a brief, summarised, positive case. Nonetheless, he could've easily made his entire discussion more well-rounded by mentioning those obvious objections and why he believes they fail. This would've only taken a small amount of space, yet would've made this book much more effective at it's aim of showing why one should be an atheist.
So, in making this criticism I will focus on the one glaring example where the arguments put forward are unequivocally and definitively incomplete. That is, Chapter 6. He refers to "The Cosmological Argument" when in actual fact there is no such thing- there are three broad forms of cosmological argument that together are given the family name "Cosmological Arguments" only because they are similar in their reference point- the cosmos. Baggini presents the design argument as the "watchmaker" argument given by Paley centuries ago, when scientific findings in the past 50 years have completely revolutionised the discussion on this argument. Now, it is true that most religious believers do not base their faith on natural theology, but nonetheless, since he's presenting and critiquing arguments for God's existence, he is at least obliged to mention the ones that modern Christian apologists and philosophers consider the most persuasive, such as modern renderings of the Kalam and Leibnizian Cosmological arguments or the fine tuning argument. I am aware of his statement in Ch 7 that he didn't want to mention sophisticated defences of theistic belief, but I'm not saying that is necessary. (I suspect he had in made some of Plantinga's philosophically dense ideas such as reformed epistemology). I'm asking him to merely lay out a more forceful argument, instead of laying out an ancient strawman.
The second criticism was that he falls prey to the very thing he shows awareness of in the introduction, by painting an overly rosy picture of atheism. Some of the ideas perpetuated by the figures who have paved the way for modern day atheism- Nietzsche, for example- are darker than the picture of atheism that Baggini presents. Atheism is in it's infancy, as Baggini notes, but he pays little attention to dark atheist ideas, or to the fact that atheism has arisen in societies heavily influenced by Christian belief. Baggini would have you believe that atheism is a knight in shining armour, waving the torch of rational thinking alight and ridding us of superstition. But where will atheism really lead people in the future? Caution is required, because as John Dickson observed: Any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.
Baggini's picture didn't make enough room for the darker side of atheism, and thus he ends up being guilty of the very thing he foresaw in his own introduction. As he admits in Chapter 7, "the atheism described in this book really is a form of humanism". He even says he sees positive atheism and humanism as "coterminous", but the problem is that he simply doesn't give any justification for thinking this! And considering that it's such a huge part of the framework within which he describes and justifies atheism, this is a huge oversight. In other words, given the position of naturalism- nature is all there is- that Baggini subscribes to, many "logical" views of the world and ways of living are possible. And many of them are much bleaker than Baggini's polite and tolerant outlook, so I'm not sure he has a right to commandeer atheism by painting it in such a positive light. Perhaps Baggini is, as we all are, a product of his times.
By balancing out the strong readability and the clarity with which Baggini wrote with the two main criticisms I've levelled at the book, I give it 2.5 stars.
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