Amateur atheism: Best leave it to the pros?

Catholic philosopher John Haught recently had an article in Christian Century entitled "Amateur Atheists: Why the new atheism isn't serious"

It's well done and suggests his new book, God and the New Atheism , from which it is adapted, will be worthwhile.

For example,

For many years I taught an introductory theology course for undergraduates titled "The Problem of God." My fellow instructors and I were convinced that our students should be exposed to the most erudite of the unbelievers. Our rationale was that any mature commitment that intelligent young people might make to a religious faith should be critically tested by the very best opponents.

The recent books by Richard Dawkins, Samuel Harris and Christopher Hitchens would never have made the required-reading list. Their tirades would simply reinforce students' ignorance not only of religion but also of atheism. The new atheists do little more than provide a fresh catalogue of the evils wrought by members of the theistic faiths.

Similarly, Time Immortal responds to The Rational Responders, an amateur bunch of atheists if ever there was one:

I don't usually cruise atheist websites all that much — few enough of them are designed well enough for my tastes, and at any rate I don't much enjoy having to switch off large portions of my brain just to be able to successfully navigate through one irrational tirade after another. That said, for some reason I decided to check out theRational Responders website. Their byline reads: "Believe in God? We can fix that." And yet, reading through their list of ‘frequently asked questions' (and some of the rest of the site), I was tempted to think instead of Chesterton's remark regarding Ingersol: "almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

(Note: Chesterton did NOT invent that phrase. Check out Acts 26:26-29, written two thousand years ago, where something similar was happening.)

Some people might think that Haught, Time Imm, (and me) are a bit hard on the New Atheists. But their widely noticed complete lack of any new ideas in atheism (as opposed to new books) is troubling for several reasons:

1. When people seek more influence in society without having new ideas to offer, it's hard to see the benefit to the society. The reason they didn't have much influence before is that we'd heard it all before and were not persuaded. Is that our fault or theirs?

(2) I believe that displaced anxiety about politicized Islamic extremism drives some of this anti-religious stuff. The extremists are clever, determined, and dangerous opponents. Whether you are a Muslim, a Christian, or an atheist, if you wish to oppose them, you will need a carefully thought out strategy.

Some people hide out from this problem by attacking Christian fundamentalists and promoting a mostly meaningless scare about people who believe in God in general.

As we pointed out in The Spiritual Brain, the born-agains have widely disparate views, as Zogby Poll recently discovered when they enterprisingly asked Democrats, not Republicans, if they considered themselves born again, and sure enough, lots of them did.

Anyway, more from Haught, comparing the great atheists of the past to their current dwarfish representatives:

The classical atheists, by contrast, demanded a much more radical transformation of human culture and consciousness. This is most evident when we consider works by Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. To them atheism not only should make all the difference in the world; it would take a superhuman effort to embrace it. "Atheism," as Sartre remarked, "is a cruel and long-range affair." Like Nietzsche and Camus, Sartre thought that most people would be too weak to accept the terrifying consequences of the death of God.

By contrast, the recent atheist authors want atheism to prevail at the least possible expense to the agreeable socioeconomic circumstances out of which they sermonize. They would have the God-religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—simply disappear, after which we should be able go on enjoying the same lifestyle as before.

Nope. That won't happen. My neighbours routinely mention God when they want to explain why they do something that is not obviously rewarded in some self-centred or family-centred way.

Actually, I was giving a talk last night and found myself saying,

If you go by science evidence, there was never a worse time to be an
atheist than the last 100 years.

The Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe is essentially a creationist theory. BANG!! And there it is. A universe
unfolding.

Quantum mechanics put an end to the idea that everything could be controlled by iron laws of nature. The human brain, as well as many other systems, is at bottom a quantum system. These systems are not governed by iron determinist laws.

Antony Flew, the world's best respected academic atheist, decided that there is a God in 2004, on account of the language of the human genome.

Shouldn't genome mapping have confirmed atheism, rather than killing it? Shouldn't it have found the fabled "God gene" (that doesn't really exist)?

Look, be an atheist if you must. I wouldn't want anyone sitting in a church who honestly doesn't want to be there. I have enough respect for religion not to force it on anyone.

But don't try telling me that your convictions are based on evidence from science.

Salvo 7: Just released edition features batty bioethicists, suckered scientists, senseless psychologists ...

Oh yes, and illiterate illusionists, "expert elitists," and home-grown humanists. Hey, what's not to like about this cast?

No seriously, it focuses on the New Atheism - new and unimproved, according to the contributors, many of whom you can read here.

Here, for example, Marcia Segelstsein interviews Dinesh D'Souza:

The first thing you notice about Dinesh D'Souza is an intellectual swagger that borders on cockiness without crossing over. Such confidence could be attributed to his Dartmouth education, to his position as policy advisor in the Reagan administration, to his near ubiquitous presence on television news shows, or to the library of critically acclaimed books that he has published on everything from racism to economic prosperity. But you get the feeling that it actually stems from the knowledge that, at any given moment, he is probably the smartest person in the room. Don't get me wrong; he's not arrogant in the least. It's just that he knows, deep down, that he's smarter than you; he's smarter than me; and perhaps most importantly, he's smarter than the New Atheists whom he routinely debates at universities across the nation.

Well, D'Souza might be the smartest person in the room or not, but the consistent problem with the New Atheism is that only the hostility is new, not the arguments. They are godless jihadis, for the most part, but they prefer press clippings and royalties to Afghan training camps and flying shards of bone. That preference I entirely understand but their efforts to advance their religious claims in the name of science are really getting to be quite the bore. My own quick guide to the new atheist movement is here.

My own regular Deprogram column in that isssue isn't about the New Atheism, actually. It's about the Flores man flap: DEPROGRAM with Denyse O'Leary The Hobbit That Wasn’t: A New Human Species Is Discovered, Doubted, and Debunked. Unfortunately, it won't be on line for months. Rot.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting piece from Salvo 6: Tom's Cruise-ade: Dunno Much Scientology by Regis Nicoll - on the growth of scientology among American celebs

One of my earlier Deprogram columns: Livin' on a Prayer At Least That's What One Much-Maligned Scientific Study Would Seem to Show

Hey, you know you want to subscribe. Give yourself or someone you know Salvo for Christmas, and help us new media writers continue to bring you good stuff cheap.

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 8: Do the “new atheists” help or hurt the cause of Darwinism? Winner announcement

Recently, we asked Uncommon Descent Contest Question 8: Do the "new atheists" help or hurt the cause of Darwinism?

The new atheists' impact in general is often debated. What exactly have they contributed to atheism? Many traditional atheists or their sympathizers think not much.

Bryon R. McCane, Professor of Religion at Wofford College, asks,

Has something gone wrong with the new atheism? For awhile, it was really on a roll. Several best-selling books aggressively attacked religion, calling it a “delusion” (Richard Dawkins), and a “spell” (Daniel Dennett) that “poisons everything” (Christopher Hitchens). Bill Maher’s movie “Religulous” warned that humankind must get rid of religion or die. New atheism looked like the wave of the future. But not anymore. “Religulous” got mixed reviews and disappeared quickly. Rebuttals to Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens have appeared, culminating with Karen Armstrong’s new book, The Case for God. Sales of atheist books have fallen off the charts, literally. Months have gone by since one appeared on the best-seller list.

To me, the key problem was that they had a new level of hate, not a new idea. I wrote about that here.

Winner announcement: Jerry at 91. I especially enjoyed this observation:

There is an old maxim in marketing. Nothing kills a bad product faster than extensive advertising and good distribution. The faster people realize how bad a product is, the quicker it is rejected. The new atheist movement has accelerated the communication and distribution of their product but in the process open themselves up for intense scrutiny.

I must arrange for more prizes, as I would have liked to offer StephenB and Adel DiBagno a prize for their entertaining and useful discussion; however, I have only five copies of Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), hardcover, and if I burn through 60% of them in one contest, the publisher might not be very anxious to help me restock.

Jerry, I need a snail address for you.

I am a bit behind, judging contests, due to unrelated uproars. But here are the entries that seemed, to me at least, to shed light: Go here for more.

A friend wanted to know when I am going to blog on ...

... this column by Peter Berkowitz in the Wall Steet Journal on the "new, new atheism", because everyone else has:

... Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and the rest have some fair claim to novelty. But not where it really counts. They contend that from the vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. The disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.

There, I just did.

Yes, as Berkowitz notes, the remarkable part is that they have nothing much new to say. As Mario and I discovered when we looked into the research underpinnings of a lot of arguments for the new atheism, a lot of the research is pretty shoddy too. We go into that part in some detail in The Spiritual Brain.

Berkowitz also comments,

Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.

I'm sure glad he said that. Muslim friends have pointed out to me on a number of occasions that the Islamist fanatics are not spiritually minded people. They don't interact with the spiritual dimensions of Islam; they are, instead, obsessed with trivia like whether they should grow a beard (when they are not in a complete meltdown about everything they hate). For too long, those people have been able to get away with the pretence that they are better interpreters of Islam than other Muslims are. And the unfocused book-length rants of the atheist authors helps maintain the deception among non-Muslims.

Investigating atheism?: Start here

Rupert Sheldrake, whose books I have just ordered from the library, has put up a site called Investigating Atheism. He seems to be even-handed, though I gather he thinks that the "New Atheism" is as much a crock as I do (it is the "New Coke" of atheism):

the 'new atheists' have had a mixed reception, not only among the religious (as is to be expected) but also among fellow atheists and agnostics, who have often accused them of oversimplifying the issues.

The purpose of this site is to set these contemporary 'God Wars' in their historical context, and to offer a range of perspectives (from all sides) on the chief issues raised by the 'new atheists'. We hope this will encourage more informed opinion about the issues, discourage oversimplification of the debate, and deepen the interest in the subject.

Sheldrake provides many useful references and links. Note especially, the New Atheist goals, where we learn, for example, that

Belief in God and evolution are not compatible.

Religion tends to subvert science.

Atheism is not discredited by the 'atheist tyrannies' of Hitler and Stalin.

Religious education of children is 'child abuse'.

Hardly a recipe for social peace.

The new atheists: Santa's sleigh came and went, and never gave them what they needed

In The Ottawa Citizen, Robert Sibley advises

From New Age cults to murderous fundamentalism, these are dark times for religion, and the 'new atheists' are in the ascendant. The problem with their movement is that they don't understand the source of their hostility ... (December 26, 2008)

Oh? In the ascendant? In the legacy mainstream media, maybe, but not in the world at large.

In fact, this year - for the first time in a long while - I noticed a decisive pushback against their efforts to stop people from saying "Merry Christmas!"

Be a Christian, don't be a Christian, ... it's your choice. But December 25 is Christmas Day. In Canada, both December 25 and December 26 are statutory holidays - and pretty popular ones, too, so you need to keep that fact in mind if you intend to try litigation. No one is going to thank you for forcing them to work on one of those days, if they are not in an essential service field.

Anyway, I don't think the new atheists' movement is really going anywhere because what they don't have is any important new ideas.

I mean, once you get past Richard Dawkins explaining to Ben Stein in Expelled that space aliens might have created life - but not God - or Lee Smolin's zillions of flopped universes, theirs are not new ideas that we can compare with, say, the discovery of neuroplasticity in the brain.

Now THAT was a discovery - oh my heavens, what a discovery! Just think of all the old people who realize that they are not consigned to involuntary senility after all! But that discovery did not help materialist atheism one bit. Neuroplasticity makes way more sense if your immaterial mind is real and directs your brain.

Which reminds me: What discoveries would have helped materialist atheism? Here are some:

1995: It is conclusively proven that there is a single gene switch that causes people to be gay or straight. Soon after, the single switches that cause people to be fat or thin, faithful or unfaithful to their partners, and liberal or conservative in their voting patterns are quickly found.

1996: It becomes impossible to determine whether one is communicating by keyboard with a human or a chimpanzee.

1998: Major science geek gets Nobel Prize for discovering the God gene, which causes people to be religious.

1999: It becomes impossible to determine whether one is communicating by keyboard with a human or a computer.

2000: A rogue module is found in the brain that controls the sense that one is an "I" rather than an "it." Everyone is really an "it" after all, and the "I" factor is a delusion caused by a glitch.

2001: Evolutionary psychologists lead the way in developing effective treatments for mental disorders, using their theories, including the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution, which wins a Nobel Prize for its sheer cogency.

2004: A computer program is developed that can predict within 99.99999% certainty who will commit a crime - or do a variety of other things - in the next twelve months, all based on hormones and similar factors.

2007: Most people worldwide agree that belief in God is harmful because it leads to bad ideas like right and wrong, and the harmful practice of accepting responsibility for one's own actions. Billions of people urge their governments to take over intimate details of their lives to prevent further harm.

Okay, obviously, none of this happened. And Bill Maher's Religulous came and went.

The real reason for the spate of New Atheist books, as I have mentioned elsewhere, is that they want you to become an atheist now - before you figure out that atheism is a crock. There is no way out of the desperations of human existence through atheism.

Look, I am NOT one of those feel-good Christians who try to tell you that God has a wonderful plan for your life. Maybe he does, and I am glad for you. But the figure at the front of my own church is of a crucified man (depicted above), and it is in that knowledge that I am instructed to live the rest of my life.

There is no escape from the glory and tragedy of being human, not an animal, and the "new atheist" movement is a paltry cheat and a waste of your time.

If you want to be an atheist, be an old atheist, not one of these new atheists, looking for the latest buzz from the popular science press to bolster lame ideas. Believe in God or don't believe - you are still accountable for what you do. You really are.

Atheists on the "new atheism"

So the new atheism is to the old atheism what lo-fat marge is to butter, according to Utne Reader?

Dalrymple’s basic, but crucial observation is that this latest spate of antireligious book lack originality. “[They] imagine themselves to be like the intrepid explorer Sir Richard Burton, who in 1853 disguised himself as a Muslim merchant, went to Mecca, and then wrote a book about his unprecedented feat,” he writes. “They advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14.”

Where have I heard that before? By the way, hat tip to Stormbringer who sends me a summary of his own views in these matters - quite different from theirs.

The main thing that concerns me is that people like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins - popular new atheists - have a viewpoint about life that would make much that most people believe - for what they think to be good reasons - a crime, or next thing to it.

Just thought you might want to know.

I am currently reading "old atheist" Antony Flew's book, There IS a God, explaining why he abandoned five decades of atheism. I'll say more about his book shortly, but the most remarkable thing about it is the vastly superior civilization Flew inhabited to anything the "new atheists" seem to offer. If their idea is not catching on, that's probably why.

The new "anti-God" crusade: Further evidence of materialism's failure?

O'Leary looks at the spate of anti-God books and other promotions for the new Church of Atheism, and suspects that atheism was way more fun in the days when it was just a quiet, Godless Sunday at home.

Now, the church - as we all know - is the weak point of any religion. And when all you've got is a church - and remember, these people are supposed to be "beyond" belief - well, to me, that sounds a bit like getting married and finding out that you have no spouse but two mothers-in-law ... and more too, if you want them!

Part 1: What's with the recent anti-God crusade, supposedly in the name of "science"?

Recently, spurred perhaps by the growing failures of materialism, materialist atheists have attempted to institutionalize their beliefs as a Church of Atheism. And they are full, chock full, of angst.

Part 2: Antireligious zealotry riffs off materialist science

Put simply: Materialist science is in trouble. And the trouble does not stem from traditional religions, though materialists are - as one might expect - quick to blame their troubles on traditional religions and to reassure themselves that - despite all the evidence - traditional religions are doomed. But, materialists are also smug and thus cannot imagine or respond to any source of trouble arising from their interpretation of the evidence.

They have apparently decided instead to target the Christian religion as the source of their problems.

Part 3: The Beyond Belief conference

Goodness, it's hard to think of a single reason for joining these people's sect unless you have a lot of hostility to vent! And$30 billion from Bill Gates isn't going to change that.

Actually, it's hard to tell whether some of these people hate Christians more than they hate each other. Thus I would argue against any atheist getting involved with them, on mental health grounds alone.

Part 4: The "Blasphemy Challenge"

As Jerry Adler's Newsweek article admits, most theologians do not interpret blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as simply making a statement of that type, so most of the kids are probably doing it for a lark, but their atheist elders are deadly serious. Atheists don't tend to have had many children, so they must recruit.

Part 5: Why the acclaim for atheist authors?

One thing I have learned from a lifetime in media is that most media people are unidirectional skeptics - they are very skeptical of non-materialism but not the least bit skeptical of materialism.

Two things follow: Journalists in the legacy mainstream media are regularly astonished by phenomena that better informed people might have predicted - for example the prevalence of religious belief in a high tech age.

Part 6: Profiles in militant atheists - Daniel Dennett and Breaking the Spell

In Dennett's Breaking the Spell, as in the entire recent spate of atheist books, there isn't a single new idea of any significance, as noted earlier. The two main things that the current crop of atheist books have going for them is the unperturbable certainty of their authors that they are conferring a great public benefit - a certainty that they uncritically project onto others - and the assurance of a good deal of flattering attention from the legacy media.

The flattering attention usually will usually not include references to the highly illiberal elements of the anti-God extremists' message - elements that typically come to the fore whenever Darwinism is questioned, on whatever ground.

Part 7: Profiles in militant atheists - Richard Dawkins and the God Delusion

Ever since American Microsoft billionaire Charles Simonyi paid for his chair at Oxford in the Public Understanding of Science, zoologist Richard Dawkins has promoted atheism and an extreme form of Darwinism as the best way of doing science. In recent years, however, he has become best known for using his chair to promote atheism, rather than for promoting science ideas. His actual ideas, the selfish gene and the meme (a hypothetical mental variant of the hypothetical selfish gene) have not fared well under analysis, but no matter.

Part 8: Profiles in militant atheists - Sam Harris and Letters to a Christian Nation

From what I can tell, Harris is misplaced among professional materialist atheists. As David J. Theroux notes, he has bought into a variety of New Age and Eastern beliefs such as reincarnation. That has subjected him to many materialist attacks. Remember, materialists "know" that there is no soul.

Harris's dilemma has a simple explanation: He is in neuroscience, and he knows perfectly well that neuroscience does not confirm materialism.

Part 9: Darwinism and militant atheism

Of course, some would argue, not every Darwinist is like that. Perhaps not, but it is a reliable indicator of the true state of affairs that the "moderates" tolerate the "extremists" quite well.

Indeed, the Beyond Belief conference makes the true direction quite clear: Those theistic or Eastern traditions that are willing to morph slowly into materialist atheism, treated as a religion can spare themselves many attacks by increasingly militant atheists, who have, in many cases, found public funding for their cause. Anyone who so much as wants equal time for evidence for non-materialist views faces a storm - made all the foggier by Christian clergy who wish to converge with the materialists. Perhaps such clergy hope to be eaten last?

Part 10: British atheists vs. ID-friendly Truth in Science group

Just what the beleaguered schools need. Caught between Islamic extremists, drug dealers, sclerotic administrators, antisocial unions, and irresponsible parents, they, um, need a whack of "anti-God" literature to mix into the swirl ...

Part 11: So what are the actual trends in religion?

So far as understanding the anti-God crusade is concerned, the most useful thing to know is that the longstanding mid-twentieth century prediction that religious belief would wither away has been largely falsified.

Part 12: Unmasking the authoritarian intent of the militant atheist campaign

While some clergy are content to reassure their congregations that going along with materialism (especially Darwinism) is okay, many thoughtful Christians and Muslims are getting the picture pretty fast. The threat is not an intellectual one, but a political one.

Part 13: Theistic evolutionism and the new militant atheism

The underlying problem of accommodationist theistic evolution, of course, is the felt need to embrace Darwinism - and the materialism from which it springs. As I have suggested above, the most likely explanation, based on my encounters with theistic evolution accommodationists, is that they assume that materialism is basically true and that spiritual traditions must somehow accommodate themselves to its rule.

Put another way: Once you do think that materialism is not true, Darwinism is not true either. That raises the question of why any clergy should feel the need to sell "evolution" to their congregations, as part of their ministry.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy.

My forthcoming coauthored book is The Spiritual Brain (Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, Harper August 2007).

My previous books are By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg 2004) and Faith@Science.

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 16: Are materialist atheists smarter than other types of believers?

At any rate, so claimed a 1986 study about which Regis Nicoll writes here.

I say "smarter than other types of believers" because atheism is a form of belief like any other. Usually, in North America today, materialist atheism is meant. There are non-materialist varieties of atheism, but they are not usually strident, like the new (materialist) atheists.

Interestingly, materialist atheism tends to develop structures similar to other religious institutions (the latest is summer camps for kids). It all reminds me of Julian Huxley's 1959 proposal for a religion of evolution - but that for another day.

So, for a free copy of the The Spiritual Brain, which argues for non-materialist neuroscience, provide the best answer to this question: Are materialist atheists really smarter than other people? By what measure would we know? What difference does social privilege - such as tenure at a tax-funded institution and general acceptance in popular media make in determining who is smart?

Here are the contest rules. Four hundred words or less. Winners receive a certificate verifying their win as well as the prize. Winners must provide me with a valid postal address, though it need not be theirs. A winner's name is never added to a mailing list. Have fun!

Here's Uncommon Descent Contest Question 16 at the site, so go there to enter in the Comments box.


Here's a bit of background on the subject.

Atheism and popular culture: Religious commitment as mild dementia

Albert Einstein on the importance of faith in the reality of what we see

An event I did not happen to attend: British atheist graces Toronto

Spirituality and popular culture: Amazon's #1 atheist book is Christian

Religion: There is atheism, and then there is materialist atheism

The new atheists: Santa's sleigh came and went, and never gave them what they needed

New atheists vs. the ex-atheist

Marvin Olasky muses on the recent popularity of "new atheist" books:

Atheistic authors see themselves as avant-garde, but they merely are echoing the riffs of 19th-century scoffers who predicted the imminent demise of Christianity. Gilded Age orator Robert Ingersoll, for example, said that when Christians dominate schools and media, it is hard to mount an attack on concepts of revelation and miracles, but "now that religion's monopoly has been broken, it is within the compass of any human being to see those evidences and proofs as the feeble-minded inventions that they are."

So what happened? Why are many churches in the U.S. booming? Why is Christianity expanding so rapidly in Africa and China? To begin to answer that, we should let our imaginations run wild: What if in the 20th century, in the biggest country by land area and also in the biggest country by population, leaders had required the teaching of atheism in all schools? Freed of "feeble-minded inventions," wouldn't the world be a better place?

Oh, you say we don't have to imagine? You say the Soviet Union and China did establish atheism and the results were not pretty?

He thinks it's a passing fad. I think it's a last ditch effort to sell atheism before the science evidence for meaning and purpose in the universe makes atheism as implausible as the fairies in the bottom of the garden.

At least in the Western context. You could still be an atheist in the Eastern context, but that wouldn't abolish anything that the new atheists want to get rid of. Yu'd have karma instead of God.

For example, right in the middle of the organized atheist uproar, an atheist who was far more highly respected than any of these others, Antony Flew, came to the conclusion, based on science evidence, that there IS a God. I have written about that here.

The important thing to see is that he did NOT have an old tyme religious experience and did NOT become a fundamentalist. He simply came to the conclusion that the science evidence is best explained by the idea that there is a God. That's more or less what I think too after co-writing The Spiritual Brain.

Yes, yes, I was a Christian before that, but I didn't realize how much science evidence supports theism. I had never been asked to look at my faith that way; it was all experiential. The Spiritual Brain (I am Mario Beauregard's co-author) was a chance to look at one huge line of evidence from neuroscience about the reality of the mind.

One difference between ex-atheist Flew and the new atheists may be that Flew doesn't appear to have bought into materialist ideas of the mind - that here is really no mind, no free will - what Mario calls the central dogma of modern neuroscience.

And if you think that there is a mind, there is free will, why not a Mind behind it all, idf the evidence suggests that? Not proven, but a reasonable assumption, and certainly worthy of further investigation.

No peace between "science" and "religion," prof warns

This post was about an atheist facing death, and it is inspiring.

This one is about an atheist blowhard - an evolutionary biologist who seems determined, so far as I can see, to collapse in the ruins of Darwinism. Some excerpts from Jerry A. Coyne's "Religion in America is on the defensive" (USA Today, October 11, 2010):

Atheist books such as The God Delusion and The End of Faith have, by exposing the dangers of faith and the lack of evidence for the God of Abraham, become best-sellers. Science nibbles at religion from the other end, relentlessly consuming divine explanations and replacing them with material ones. Evolution took a huge bite a while back, and recent work on the brain has shown no evidence for souls, spirits, or any part of our personality or behavior distinct from the lump of jelly in our head. We now know that the universe did not require a creator. Science is even studying the origin of morality. So religious claims retreat into the ever-shrinking gaps not yet filled by science. And, although to be an atheist in America is still to be an outcast, America's fastest-growing brand of belief is non-belief.

As neuroscientist Mario Beauregard and I demonstrate in The Spiritual Brain, materialist explanations have utterly failed in explaining the human mind. They continue to fail even as I write and you read, with one limp speculation after another.

But soft! There is ancient evil about:

But faith will not go gentle. For each book by a "New Atheist," there are many others attacking the "movement" and demonizing atheists as arrogant, theologically ignorant, and strident.

Well, if so, you just heard from Exhibit 1.

It gets better:

Science operates by using evidence and reason. Doubt is prized, authority rejected. No finding is deemed "true" - a notion that's always provisional - unless it's repeated and verified by others. We scientists are always asking ourselves, "How can I find out whether I'm wrong?"

To that, I can only reply "Climategate," which made clear that a number of key climate scientists were willing to manipulate the system to advance their opinions versus evidence. And in the age of Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009), Expelled (a documentary about attempts to suppress findings that contradict atheist materialism) did not help the new atheists' image.

My favourite lines from Coyne's screed are

And this leads to the biggest problem with religious "truth": There's no way of knowing whether it's true. I've never met a Christian, for instance, who has been able to tell me what observations about the universe would make him abandon his beliefs in God and Jesus. (I would have thought that the Holocaust could do it, but apparently not.) There is no horror, no amount of evil in the world, that a true believer can't rationalize as consistent with a loving God. It's the ultimate way of fooling yourself. But how can you be sure you're right if you can't tell whether you're wrong?

Well, if one does not believe that one's mind has an independent reality, one cannot tell whether anything at all is true, or right or wrong. After all, if morality is all about survival of the fittest, then there is no morality, only survival of the fittest. Many Darwinists have said that our brains are adapted for fitness, not for truth.

The funniest part is this:

Out of 34 countries surveyed in a study published in Science magazine, the U.S., among the most religious, is at the bottom in accepting Darwinism: We're No. 33, with only Turkey below us.

Well, the United States put men on the moon, mapped the outer planets, and generally leads in science. And it is more religious than other countries. So, if religion makes a difference, bring it on.

The real lesson is that leading nations lead. They can lead in both science and religion. There are nations out there having a fit about both.

More on the new atheism (atheism on stilts):

The new atheists: Santa's sleigh came and went, and never gave them what they needed

Salvo 7: Just released edition features batty bioethicists, suckered scientists, senseless psychologists ...
(And we don't mind sayin' it either.)

Imagine no Religulous

Free will: Understanding what it means

A friend writes to say:

Logan Gage has a blog post up at ENV that's a must read. He discusses an AEI panel discussion about genes, neuroscience, and free will. Logan points out that the very distinguished panel (including Charles Murray, James. Q. Wilson, and David Brooks, among others) were dumfounded by the moderator's perfectly reasonable question about free will: if we are not entirely determined by our genes and by the environment, what exactly remains that is free? Doesn't the assertion that we are not entirely determined by our genes and environment mean that we have a ... soul?

Logan points out that this philosophical lacuna is the consequence of our abandonment of the concept of the classical understanding of causation, in this case of essence or form. I completely agree. Our abandonment (beginning in the late 17th century) of the classical Aristotelian/Scholastic concept of four causes - material, efficient, formal, and final- and the replacement with a 'Mechanical Philosophy' of only material and efficient causes, has left us unable to explain, understand and defend free will and even the concept of a human being. Philosopher Ed Feser addresses these issues in a great book "The Last Superstition- a Refutation of the New Atheism" which is the best book I've read in many years.

I'd like to think that the new atheism is the last superstition, but I bet it isn't.

Logan's superb post is a must read as well, and I believe that it addresses vital issues in our current debate with materialists/atheists.

Other free will stories.

New York Times spin: Elderly ex-atheist Flew is just senile.

Dinesh D’Souza, reporting on the recent attempt to minimize the significance of Antony Flew’s conversion from atheism to some sort of belief in God, based on the intelligent design of the universe, comments:

Imagine if one of the world's leading Christians--say C.S. Lewis a generation ago, or Billy Graham now--were to reject his religious beliefs and become a atheist. It would be big news! The New York Times would be all over it, for sure, and the question would be why a man who has devoted his life to God would now turn against Him? In sum, the focus would be on what were the reasons for the conversion and on what's so bad about Christianity.

Contrast this with the New York Times' approach to the conversion of philosopher Anthony Flew. Flew has been, for the past half-century, the world's leading advocate of atheism.

[ ... ]

When a major figure like Flew switches sides, the New York TImes goes into mafia-style intellectual hit mode. They selected Mark Oppenheimer of Yale, who visited Flew in England and wrote a long article in the November 4, 2007 New York Times Magazine suggesting that Flew converted because he is, well, senile. The basic idea is that Flew has lost his mind and can't remember anything, and when Christian apologists like Varghese were nice to him Flew basically surrendered to them and let them write his book.

The only evidence that Flew has lost his mind is that he's 84 years old. A man of 84 naturally loses some of his memory, especially for names, but this does not mean he has lost his marbles. Flew's own writings of the past few years are all entirely coherent and employ sophisticated philosophical vocabulary.

Well, of course, Dinesh. They had to find some way to minimize the significance. If Flew had been 48, instead of 84, they would say it was a midlife crisis. If he had been 18, they would have said ... well, you can write it yourself.

To my mind, the significance of the Times' cheap shot is that that’s ALL they can come up with. Definitely more from me later.

Dismantling Dawkins's Case Against God

I've been enjoying Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker's Answering the New Atheism.

When Mario's and my agent suggested that we write an Introduction to The Spiritual Brain, our editor suggested I read Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion.

I felt that Delusion was - like most "new atheist" works - far inferior to the earlier generation of such works by such figures as Bertrand Russell or Antony Flew. The new atheists have inherited that self-righteous post-Sixties vehemence which doubtless feels good to the venter and those who share the venter's views, but makes no new point and advances no worthwhile discussion. Anyway, Hahn and Wiker write,

For anyone who has read his other works, The God Delusion is a decided letdown. It is caustic and peevish, rather than genuinely witty or insightful, and has the feel of a book dashed off by someone who is annoyed that his opponents still exist and can barely condescend to dismiss them. As a result, The God Delusionis filled with self-congratulatory smugness appropriate to gala dinners thrown by people of the same tightly-wound (pp. 4-5) intellectual circle who, after too much wine, trade in spiteful quips about the incomprehensible stupidity of anyone not sharing their opinions.

Antony Flew has gone as far as to call Dawkins a bigot,

An academic attacking some ideological position which s/he believes to be mistaken must of course attack that position in its strongest form. This Dawkins does not do in the case of Einstein and his failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot.

I thought Hahn and Wiker's cover (below) hilarious, and hope you agree.

Uncommon Descent Contest Question 16: Are materialist atheists smarter than other types of believers? - winner announced

Go here for the original post and all comments.

The title question above riffed off a study that claimed to prove such a point. I must also have been thinking of the “Brights” movement of materialist atheists.

The winner here is Barb at 2, who needs to provide me with a postal address at which she may receive a copy of The Spiritual Brain. Here is her entry appended, with a couple of comments interspersed:

"Are materialist atheists smarter than other people? How would we know?"

The short answer is no, not really. Paul Johnson wrote a fascinating book entitled Intellectuals, in which essays describe the life courses and contributions of men and women who are considered by most to be of at least above average intelligence. Johnson noted that while these people often did their own thing (so to speak), there is a kind of ‘herd mentality’ amongst intellectuals. It’s as if collective peer pressure stops them from truly speaking their minds. The materialist ‘new’ atheism espoused today is nothing more than the ‘old’ atheism with extra doses of rage and hatred towards anything remotely godlike or religious in nature.

[Re the book Intellectuals, I strongly recommend it, as I read it on the advice of a friend. Trust me, you would not want most current cultural icons as advisors. ]

Standardized IQ tests could be given, but this would not necessarily prove that materialist atheists are smarter than others, since Daniel Coleman asserts that there are other types of intelligence including emotional and social intelligence that could be used as measuring sticks.

[I think the book meant here is Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. All concepts of this sort run the risk of descending into fad, though that does not mean that their original insight cannot tell us anything. (I just hope that the [fictional] woman who throws a tantrum at my New' Year's party and blubbers all over my living room doesn't go away proclaiming that she is way smarter than the rest of us because she supposedly has "emotional intelligence.")]

What about everyday life? Have the materialist atheists discovered true meaning in their lives? Viktor Frankl wrote that man’s search for meaning is the primary motivational force in one’s life. Or are they cogs in a machine, slaving away because their ARM adjusted again and now they’re underwater with respects to the mortgage on their house?

[Hard to say, no? My own problem isn't with people who have discovered no meaning in their lives but with people who have discovered a meaning that sounds suspect. Usually, people who have found no meaning are just plain depressed. The others can be all too active in trying to force their "meaning" into reality. ]

If they truly are smarter than other people, then they’re not in credit card hell making minimum payments, they’re not victims of the financial collapse of Wall Street, and they’re not gorging on junk food, taking drugs, or engaging in any self-destructive behaviors.

[Well, if that is true of anyone, I am sure glad if they are not demanding that I give them a loan or tax funding. Unfortunately, that actually happens. I'd rather give charity. In some quarters, that is a dirty word, but at least it is a personal relationship. ]

Other comments:

Tribune7 at 1 writes, "People who brag about being smart invariably end up losing the hand." If so, I may have done someone somewhere a mercy. Recently, a correspondent wrote me to say that I had helped talk him out of a career in alligator wrestling.

I supposed that he would eventually get bored with being called "Lefty."

At 4 toscents asks:

So, who’s smarter? The dissembling philosopher, or the mildly demented believer? Does it matter?

Which would you trust with an intimate confession?

Well, it’s nice to be asked a question I can answer with certainty. I don’t need to trust either of them, for the same reason as I do not need to believe either of two implausible stories.

Here are the contest rules. I think Contest 19 is still open.

New atheism: Widely read but mostly dead, commentator says

Here's Salvo Magazine's interview with Dinesh d'Souza on the "new atheist" movement:

You write that "God is the future, and atheism is on its way out." How can you be so sure?

It's a matter of demographics. For example, one could make the argument that democracy is the future, and totalitarianism is on the way out. This doesn't mean that there won't be totalitarian governments, but it does mean that the ratio of totalitarian governments to free governments has been declining. A hundred years ago, there were only a dozen or so democracies in the world. Most other societies were governed by monarchs, tyrants, or inherited rulers. But by the 1940s and 1950s, you began to see an expansion of democracy. Another huge wave of democracy came along in the 1980s, and today, if you look around the world, you'll see that over half of the governments in existence are democratic. Clearly, democracy is the future. It's a prediction rooted in data.

Go here for the rest.

See also:

Spirituality and the arts: High time someone said this

Spirituality: Is this a trend? Guy tries Judaism "on spec" - discovers 7-day no-refund policy, ends as famous pulpit rabbi

Spirituality: Is this a trend? Guy tries Judaism "on spec" - discovers 7-day no-refund policy, ends as famous pulpit rabbi

In "Responding to Neo-Atheism" (American Thinker, September 21, 2008), Rick Richman - editor of Jewish Current Issues - notes that the "new atheists" are starting to get mail:

Neo-atheism has had a very successful publishing run over the past several years, with best-selling books by Christopher Hitchens ("god is not great"), Sam Harris ("Letter to a Christian Nation") and Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), among others. But this year there has been an equally impressive counter-phenomenon. Three recent books, written from three widely divergent perspectives, have responded to the arguments of neo-atheism with both intellectual force and literary grace.

He highlights agnostic mathematician David Berlinski, Catholic scholar Michael Novak and rabbi David J. Wolpe. Wolpe's case is especially interesting:

Wolpe is the senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and teaches modern Jewish religious thought at UCLA, but he was -- at an important stage in his life -- an ardent atheist. He grew up in a rabbinical family, initially rebelled against a religious future and, influenced by the works of Bertrand Russell, fell into atheism during his college years. He eventually rejected Russell's views decided to try rabbinical school -- "on spec," as he told his friends. One of his brothers predicted it would be "a phase."

His new book is his seventh he has written during the phase. His first book, "The Healer of Shattered Hearts," was a lyrical summary of rabbinic Judaism that established him, in Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's words, as "the poet of Jewish theology." His mother's stroke at age 52 led him to write "In Speech and Silence," a book-length meditation on words and song in religion. His most remarkable volume, "Making Loss Matter," described a way of capturing meaning from the most painful moments of life. It was written in the midst of the cancer that struck his wife at age 31, preventing her from bearing further children.

See also:

Dismantling Dawkins's Case Against God

Atheist bigots: Avoiding serious questions and targeting ignorant religious folk

Philosophy: God is not dead yet - but some haven't gotten the memo

Latest news and views from The Mindful Hack ...

I must write an index next week, which may (= will) limit posting. I posted ten items today, and link them here for your convenience:

Things we know but cannot prove: Another nail in the coffin of materialism.

The fours be with you! (You will be "fours"ed to cooperate with this words/numbers game. (Hey, it's Friday night!)

Altruism: Why it can't really exist but why it does anyway

Evolutionary psychology: Eliot Spitzer is a kludgebrain!, psychologist opines (but so are we all)

Mind and medicine: The placebo effect - Did your doctor just prescribe you a quarter teaspoon of coloured sugar? Maybe ...

Materialism: When the store is on fire, hold a fire sale:

Excerpt: So this is the latest pseudo-explanation of the soul? I could do better myself! How about this: Minds that are accustomed to think in terms of a future have difficulty grasping the idea that there is no future after death.

Way simpler, to be sure, but materialists wouldn't buy it because I forgot to drag in the Paleolithic cave guys telling stories around the fireside - the staple of evolutionary psychology.

Fitna: A thoughtful Muslim's response The predicted riots largely didn't happen, but where to go from here?

Excerpt: And while we are here: Dial-a-mob/rent-a-riot behaviour is NOT copyright to Middle Eastern Muslims. I ran into the same thing among the American Ivy League elite in May 2005, when the New York Times bungled a story I broke on my other blog, The Post-Darwinist, claiming that a film about to be shown at the Smithsonian was "anti-evolution." It wasn't; it did not even address the subject. But zillions of Darwinbots, as I called them, behaved exactly as if it had. It's a good thing that no one gives them sharp objects to play with.

Rupert Sheldrake's guide to New Atheism (which makes it sound like New Coke, really)

Can a transplanted heart lead to transplanted thoughts? Well, maybe, but the mechanism might be fairly conventional.

Why science without God destroys itself: Because the alternative idea of a multiverse is a step into magic, that's why

By the way, regarding the fact that I no longer accept or display comments, a word of explanation, originally published at the Post-Darwinist (Sunday, April 20):

Some readers have written to ask why I disabled the Combox. Two reasons:

1. Time pressure. Interest in both the intelligent design controversy and the mind vs. materialism controversy has exploded. I cannot manage all my current desks nor train people fast enough without cutting back on all non-essential activities.

2. Canada's current "human rights" regime has created significant difficulties for bloggers with comboxes for which they are responsible. I am one of the people campaigning for reform, but I don't know when or whether reform will happen. If you want to know more about that kind of thing, go here or here.

If reform happens and I have the time, I will reenable the combox.

Since then one person has written to me, disputing that bloggers like me face serious dangers in Canada. I wish that person were correct, but he is not. I can only recommend checking out the Web sites linked above, and also "global content provider" Mark Steyn's recent column in historic Maclean's Magazine (Steyn himself has been charged and so has Maclean's.)

Alister McGrath on Richard Dawkins - atheism is simpleminded narcissism?

Oxford historian Alister McGrath, author of Twilight of Atheism and formerly an atheist himself, reflects on his debates with Richard Dawkins, who seems to have retired from his science career to bash religion.
Simpleminded?

I am disappointed. I would have expected an Oxford professor to use a much more careful, scholarly approach, always trying to see an opponent at his best, and not using simplistic generalizations. I can entirely understand why Michael Ruse and many other atheists are embarrassed by The God Delusion. What concerns me most, however, is what this book shows us about today's atheism. I think this book is being read primarily by atheists who want to bolster their faith, when all around them God is being taken more seriously than he has for many years. It is almost as if atheists want cheap, slick answers, and don't want to face up to the big questions. Dawkins gives them a simple way of looking at life: people who believe in God are mad, bad and sad; atheists are bold, brilliant, and brave. You don’t need to think about things; you don't need to read books by Christians. You can write them off in advance as the predictable rantings of deluded idiots. It’s very worrying, and shows how dogmatic and simplistic atheism has now become.

Narcissism? Interviewer Dinesh d'Souza offers,

Even more telling, during your opening statement you referenced Dr. Dawkins or his work ten times, yet he never made reference to you. At the end of the debate, after your final comment, he simply laughed. Given Freud’s characterization of narcissism, that all libido is invested in the self and no other objects exist, perhaps Dawkins's fundamentalism is really narcissism. Since Dawkins is an atheist then only atheism is relevant. Neither the lives of billions of believers, nor the collective works of Augustine, nor Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, nor the countless acts of Christian charity over the last two thousand years seem to matter to Dawkins.

McGrath doesn't dispute that.

Wow, things are really heating up in this area - and about time too.

Also more on ex-world famous atheist Antony Flew's new book - "There IS a God" - wonderful cover! - but you have to go here and scroll down to see it.

More D'Souza? He also quotes Stanley Fish on shallow, dogmatic atheists and offers a post-mortem on secularism.

My series on the last-ditch anti-God crusade is here.

Articles of interest: On materialists, atheists, consciousness, tenured authoritarian crackpots and more

Here's a Breakpoint commentary on "Breaking the Spell of Materialism"by Regis Nicoll, arguing that materialism is a new form of fundamentalism:

Materialism is a worldview based on a naturalistic understanding of reality. In materialism, the natural world is all there is. There is no supernatural—neither spirit nor soul nor God. There is only “nature”: the cosmic matrix of matter and energy operating according to physical laws. Reality is what is objective, observable and reproducible. For the materialist, the science is “in”: everything is a product of physical processes. On the surface of things, this would seem correct.

But it is not only incorrect, it is impossible.

Madeleine Bunting thinks that the United States is to blame for Dawkins's tirades against religion:

This wave of new atheism is deeply political -- and against some of its targets even a churchgoer might cheer them on. What they all share is a loathing of increasing religiosity in United States politics, which has contributed to a disastrous presidency and undermined scientific understanding

Oh well, that's all right then, I suppose, as long as Dawkins himself isn't to blame for what he says. She makes an interesting point, however, that for the most part the new atheists are "in danger of a spectacular failure." Yes, I think so: Shrill hostility is a tough sell.

Mary Grabar, offering students an antidote to tenured authoritarian crackpots, quotes Elizabeth Kantor:

"It's fatal to any totalitarian project for people to believe that there is an authority that they can appealo over the heads of the political power. That’s why totalitarian governments cannot tolerate religion. The postmodernist pretense that all authority is just a mask for raw power and that all reasoning is only rationalization is no defense at all against oppression—in fact, it can be a justification for it. Christianity, in contrast, is a guarantor of individual human freedom, not a threat to it."

Oh, and here's British physicist David Tyler on the latest attempt to deconstruct consciousness:

The materialist mind-set is a universal acid that eats away at everything, including itself. Consequently, the mind has to be a product of hierarchical levels of neuronal firings, and personality has to be an illusion. We are ultimately conscious machines. Why anyone with these views should think that our neuronal activity can have anything to do with truth and reality is a mystery to me! But even more important, the materialist approach to consciousness is commonly dignified by the name "science". Other approaches, which are likely to be linked to Theism, are labeled "religion" and are excluded, on demarcation grounds, from science. This is an unacceptable situation, for as metaphysics, materialism has a philosophical standing that is entirely equivalent to Theism.

(Note: For the rest of this week, I am tied up with a big writers' conference and won't likely be able to blog. If I'm not too tired, I'll be back to it Sunday.)