Specter of Reason

Imagine a community called Storyville, where there are no religious institutions per se, but where various stories are circulated which we would call "religious."  Let's say these are stories from the Bible, such as the story of Job.  In Storyville, the questions might arise:  Are these stories based on facts?  Do they represent some features of the world or our history?  Does the character of Job represent a real person who lived some time in the past?  Does the character of God represent a real person who lived in the past? A denizen of Storyville might respond, "Job may have been a real person, but what sort of person could God have been?  I don't think God sounds like a person at all.  Is God supposed to represent some abstract quality or force of nature?  Maybe God is supposed to be both:  a person, but also some other kind of force of nature, or some quality inherent in nature.  It doesn't seem to make sense, but it's just...

Russell Blackford and Udo  Schüklenk's latest, 50 Great Myths About Atheism , is now available for your Kindle.  Since the school year is just about to start, I doubt I'll have a chance to read it any time soon.  But it looks rather good.  I'd love to hear what others have to say about it. P.S.  I noticed that the Amazon page does not list the authors.  That seems rather criminal to me.

Peter van Inwagen has written a response to Bertrand Russell's teapot argument (H/T ex-apologist ) in which he assures us that there are people who accept the following two propositions:      (1) There is no reason to believe that God exists.      (2) Any one who accepts (1) should conclude that the probability of the existence of God is essentially 0. He offers Russell's teapot argument as an example.  However, while Russell clearly accepts (1), there's no discernible evidence that Russell ever endorsed anything like (2).  In the essay which van Inwagen cites ( "Is There A God? ", Russell, 1952), Russell argues that a divine purpose is improbable (on the scientific evidence) and thus that there is no reason to believe in a God.  He deduces the latter from the former, not the former from the latter.  Furthermore, his teapot argument is offered to a different purpose altogether. Here is what Russell writes, and what van Inwa...

I want to consider the idea that there are three different common uses for each the following sentences: (1) God does not exist. (2) God exists.  I will outline a version of theological noncognitivism (TN), which is normally taken to entail the belief that (1) and (2) are neither true nor false.  The idea of noncognitivism in general (be it theological, moral, or what have you) is that the concepts in question are not propositional, which is another way of saying that they cannot be evaluated as either true or false.  TN implies that (1) and (2) are non-truth-evaluable under religious usages of (1) and (2).  However, what I will argue is that TN can acknowledge truth-evaluable versions of (1) and (2), and that noncognitivists can even assent to common uses of (1) which are truth-evaluable. It might look like I'm trying to mix noncognitivism with cognitivism, but that's not entirely true.  It also might look like I'm trying to tweak noncognitivism to make ...

Seinfeld , one of the most successful shows in television history, was purportedly about nothing .  Of course that was never true.  The show was about a few people with consistent personality quirks, a bit narcissistic and socially challenged (and challenging). Still, people like to say it was "about nothing," not taking the word too literally. When physicist and outspoken atheist Lawrence Krauss talks about the scientific concept of nothing , he isn't literally talking about nothing, either.  In his view, if nothing is a scientifically legitimate concept, then it refers to something measurable.  You can quantify it somehow.  I agree.  Science deals in the quantifiable and measurable, after all.  It does not deal in that which cannot, in principle, be measured one way or another.  Yet it's plain as day that, if you can measure some x , then x does not equal nothing .  If you can measure it, it isn't nothing.  And so we must admit ...

I acknowledged physicist Sean Carroll's take on the Krauss debacle in my last post, and I was tempted to critique it at the time, but decided that doing so required a new post.  This is that post. Carroll is critical of Krauss, but he also tries to defend him by putting his work in context.  He says the physics Krauss is talking about does have something to add to "the atheism vs. theism popular debate."  I find that unlikely, and Carroll's argument offers a good opportunity to explore why. According to Carroll, quantum field theory shows that you don't need a Creator in a complete cosmological model of the universe.  Of course, we're talking about a complete and coherent scientific model of the universe.  But did we need quantum field theory to show us that?  Hardly. Does quantum field theory actually show it, even?  To do that, wouldn't it have to have an empirically definable notion of a Creator? Furthermore, is Carroll suggesting that you ...

I've been discussing public displays of atheism with Jean Kazez , and it's about time I've made my case in a bit more detail. Jean says some prominent atheists are presenting views that aren't appropriate for general consumption. Jean mentions two specific views: first, that atheism is incompatible with objective morality; second, that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. She says she's more confident about the first point, and that there is room for "reasonable" disagreement about the second one. I guess this means it would be unreasonable to even suggest that atheists should reject objective morality in public. That means I and a number of other atheists, including Russell Blackford, are unreasonable. There is a whole lot of history here--not so much between me and Jean, but between her and several bloggers far more prominent than myself. I'm talking about Russell , Ophelia Benson , and Jerry Coyne , among others. There are di...

If we define atheism as either a lack of belief in God or as the rejection of belief in God, then theological noncognitivism qualifies as a variety of atheism. Specifically, it is the belief that the term "God" is nonsensical and, therefore, that statements of theistic belief (e.g., "God exists" and "I believe in God") do not express propositions and so cannot be rationally considered. According to theological noncognitivists, belief in God is not a rational option for anyone . Thus, if somebody says they believe in God, they are not expressing a rational belief in a particular entity. They may mean any number of things: that there is an extra-biological justification for life, that they are loyal members of a clan, etc. Theological noncognitivism does not regard statements of belief as meaning anything in particular. There need not be a single thread which defines religious language as such. Theological noncognitivism is only a position on what sta...

"a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said." --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , section 304 One of the common arguments against atheism is that it offers no ground for morality. Atheism is equated with moral relativism and nihilism, with the idea that nothing is ultimately good or bad, and so there can be no reason to choose one action over another. This, it is said, undermines the very fabric of civilization. I shall argue that this is not only false, but backwards. If there can be any ground for moral decisions, it certainly is not theism. Theism fails to offer a knowable ground for moral wisdom. (Note: This is not to say that religions have no moral wisdom to offer. If a religious institution has moral wisdom to offer, it does so in spite of and in contradiction with its theistic foundations.) Theism may here be defined as any belief in a supernatural agent; that is, any belief which regards natural entit...

I want to clarify some misconceptions about theological noncognitivism. The first has to do with the way theological noncognitivists use theological terms. The second has to do with the difference between theological noncognitivism and other forms of atheism, such as “weak atheism” or “teapot agnosticism.” On the usage of theistic terms, such as “God” Paul Manata has recently criticized me for using the term “God” at all. He says that my arguments for theological noncognitivism and my argument against the ability of presuppositionalism to support itself with valid arguments are inconsistent, because I reject the meaning of the term “God” in the former and yet utilize the term “God” in the latter. How can I use the term “God,” if I reject all claims that have the word God in them? Well, for one thing, I don’t reject all claims that have the word “God” in them. I never said I did. Manata’s criticism here rests on a fabrication. He says I told him I "reject...

This post is a response to a blogger named Rhology whose empassioned misunderstanding of atheism and morality is somewhat disturbing. Rhology most likely isn't stupid, just misguided and stubbornly devoted to misconceptions about the nature of philosophy. As annoying as it is to be misunderstood and misrepresented, I do appreciate these kinds of discussions at times, because they often lead me to find clearer, stronger statements of my views. For the history of this discussion, see these two blog posts and their comments on Rhology's own blog: To Whom Rights Belong and Just What Are Rights? Rhology, You have wholly misrepresented my statements and my views. I said I have found it impossible to take religious belief seriously. You say that is me "admitting my bias." Nonsense. As you very well know, I have explained why I reject religious belief . It's not bias. It's just common sense and reason. You make a blanket assertion that atheists have no b...

This post is meant to present a clearer explanation of my sense of atheism. I discussed the distinction between weak and strong atheism earlier, (see "Why I Am Not A Teapot Agnostic" ) but I will go over it in more detail here. Weak atheists are ultimately concerned with evidence. Some simply claim that there is no evidence of God's existence, and so no reason to believe in God. Others say that the evidence is so strongly against God's existence that they cannot take the God hypothesis seriously. Generally speaking, weak atheists view the God hypothesis the way most people view the Thor hypothesis. It is theoretically possible that Thor exists, but the odds are overwhelmingly against it. Weak atheism is thus a form of agnosticism, because it does not deny the possibility that God might exist. While weak atheists accept that there is a very small chance that God exists, they see no reason to put any stock in the idea. Strong atheism is different, and it comes in tw...

There are different ways of being an atheist or an agnostic. A person can be agnostic in the sense that they don’t believe in the supernatural, but think that it might really exist. Or, a person can be an agnostic in the sense that they believe in some kind of supernatural realm, just not any described by the world’s religions. Most atheists say they just don't believe in God. These atheists can also be called agnostics. For example, well-known atheists Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins say they are “teapot agnostics,” which is a reference to one of Bertrand Russell's ideas (found in his essay, " Is There a God? "). The idea is that we cannot prove that there isn’t a teapot revolving around the sun in an elliptical orbit somewhere between Earth and Mars--a teapot so small it could not "be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes." Russell continues: " But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolera...

It's easy to get lost in the "new atheist" debates without having a clear idea about what is at stake. What is the whole point, after all? Are atheists simply out to prove that they're right, and that God really doesn't exist? Is their goal to wipe religion, in all its guises, off the face of the earth? Or are they simply trying to educate and raise awareness? I don't think there's one answer that covers the motives of all atheists today. However, I think we can close the net a little bit. For two of the biggest and most important names in the "new atheist" movement (and by "most important," I mean that they have, unlike Sam Harris, established themselves as major contemporary intellects outside of this movement), Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, the primary goal is to raise awareness and understanding of religion. Dawkin's explicit goal, as stated in The God Delusion, is to raise consciousness about what he sees as an un...