Atheists - The new tyranny

General Academics Religion and Philosophy
1

From: The new tyranny

These increasingly hysterical books may be morale boosters for a particular kind of American atheism that feels victimised -- the latest candidate in a flourishing American tradition -- but they will do very little to challenge the appeal of a phenomenon they loathe too much to understand.
I disagree with this. How can the writer just write off atheists' reaction as failure to understand religion? In fact they probably understand it better than most people. And to say that it won't do much to challenge the appeal of religious thinking is rather ironic. The fact that people are talking about it, writing articles about it, highlights these ideas. Even if people don't agree with it, they are more aware that there are valid alternatives to religion. And this strikes at the heart of the main strength of religion, ignorance.

And I still don’t see why people describe Dawkins as insulting and patronising. Perhaps they have no other defence for the “audacity” of people to ask the questions that get special protection?

2

In reply to the above article, from: Fighting fire with fire

That Dawkins and Sam Harris’s books attacking religious faith have become bestsellers indicates that the time has come for such debates to go public.

The Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting decries this atheist “extremism”, displaying a very British distaste for the rudeness of questioning others’ religious beliefs. She thinks Dawkins and Harris’s stridency will work against them.

…

Bunting is correct to say that Dawkins fails to explain why religious belief persists. Perhaps he is too much of a positivist to imagine that some evolutionary adaptations (if religion is such) can become maladaptive. Psychologists know how helpful defence mechanisms can develop into crippling cognitive constraints. It might take someone a part-sociologist, part-psychologist, part-historian, and even perhaps part-mystic, to unravel why so many still believe the unproven and derive irrational comfort from it.

3

Wow! so much then for unbiased journalism.

I can’t help to wonder if she read all three books or if she quickly glanced the ‘no-star’ reviews on Amazon in a last ditch effort to get something to printing press before closing time.

4

I read both Bunting’s and De Waal’s articles in the printed edition. Bunting is a hack for the UK’s Guardian, while De Waal works for SA’s M&G.

For what it’s worth, my own opinion is that, taken as a whole, SA’s M&G is the country’s best paper because it respresents a far wider range of opinions than any other local paper.

Funny. Exactly the same thought crossed my mind. Bunting goes so far as to attribute to Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, etc. a political agenda. This take is not expanded on at all, unless she means it in the sense of “politeness” or “respect.” The “New Atheism” (same as the old one, really) has political aims only insofar as it seeks to encourage individual thinking and critical appraisal, and it is hard to see how this can be political and thus somehow objectionable, or how it could in any way diminish these authors’ arguments.

Elsewhere, Bunting laments that scientists and philosophers seem content merely to challenge others’ religious beliefs without due regard for how these beliefs arose or how (and why) they persist. She singularly fails to recognise that religion, being an important element of human social life, is a legitimate object of scientific study and is in fact being looked at from many different perspectives by experts from a multitude of disciplines. But such scientific scrutiny requires maximal impartiality - i.e. agnosticism or weak atheism - because the whole idea of god(s) is central to almost all religions.

Sadly, both Bunting and De Waal completely miss by far the biggest “elephant” (Bunting’s term for the “obvious” benefits of religion): the main issue is not any particular religion (or all of them together in conflict even) and/or its specific beliefs; the issue is that religion is symptomatic, perhaps even defining, of a mode of thought (anti-evidence-based) that is, as technology and populations grow, becoming increasingly unsustainable and dangerous. You can’t build or manage a pebble-bed nuclear reactor by faith and prayer.

Also, at one point, De Waal writes to the effect that he likes Dawkins’ idea that believers must provide evidence of god’s existence, rather than atheists having to show god’s non-existence. De Waal clearly didn’t pay sufficient attention in Philosophy 101 when the topic “Epistemology 1.1: Proving a universal negative” was discussed.

It’s a great, big shame, actually.

'Luthon64

5

I agree, as can be seen from these two articles.

Can you expand a bit what you mean by this?

6

Sure thing. It is a basic fact of epistemology that an existential statement of the form “There exists no x that is p” cannot be proved universally true. The placeholder x stands for a class of objects (not necessarily material), while p represents a property that is not logically precluded by x. Examples of such statements are “there are no white crows” and “the Riemann Hypothesis has no mathematical proof.” Such statements are known as “universal negatives” because they claim to negate the existence of something universally.

Why can this kind of statement not, in general, be proven true? Because such a proof requires an exhaustive search: one has to examine individually every single instance of x that exists, has existed and has yet to exist in order to verify that it is not (or has not) p. That is not to say that there aren’t exceptions, i.e. some universal negatives are provably true, e.g. “there is no largest prime integer,” (which proof succeeds because the nature of integers and primes is time- and location invariant.)

On the other hand, requesting a proof of the statement “there is no god” would mean that we have to examine every nook and cranny of the universe over all eternity to rule out god’s existence because god may choose to hide anywhere, anytime and change hiding places at any moment.

Clearly, only an omnipotent, omniscient and eternal god could accomplish this mammoth task of so monitoring the universe, and therefore proving “there is no god” effectively achieves its own opposite, which is logically absurd.

'Luthon64

7

It should be noted that the oft-abused misstatement, “one cannot prove a universal negative” is itself a universal negative, and so, if true, cannot itself be proved. Its truth value is thus unknowable.

(;D Such are the vagaries of logic and self-reference.)

'Luthon64

8

;D We naturalists note that God has no basis, thus not needing to examine every crook and cranny. Analysis of the arguments for Him finds them lacking power such that I daresay one never can develop a valid argument for God such that the auto-epistemic rule[Robert C.Moore] is called for that here absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence and no argument from ignorance.We destroy arguments for God that amount no more than theists putting old garbage into new cans that we empty.