Skeptical about skepticism
Robert Sawyer ponders the failure of the Brights to win over the American public.
I notice he does not even mention ACLU lawsuits to remove the Pledge of Allegiance from the schools and the Ten Commandment from the Courthouse. It was the historical ignorance of that sort of thing that mad me, back when I was an atheist, disenchanted with so many of my fellow atheists.
The idea Sawyer raises about Atheist trying to emphasize their moral nature is a good one. I do not think I was in a minority among atheists for being a believer in seven out of the Ten Commandments, and eleven out of the twelve points of the Boy Scout law. There are perfectly obvious rational this-world reasons to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and clean. I also think there is something despicable self-centered in a character who does not revere SOMETHING: let it be honor, or reason, or the flag, or the sacrament of marriage, or Apple Pie, or the Free Market, or the Code of the Jedi. To have something greater in your heart than selfish impulses, you need to have ideas in your head that revere something more important than yourself.
But Mr. Sawyer may be outlining a plan for a losing battle. I notice he cannot restrain himself from taking a gratuitous swipe at George Bush as an “anti-science fundamentalist”. This is (of course) an arrogant thing to say. And in his next sentence Mr. Sawyer cautions the atheists not to come across as arrogant. Hoo haw.
He also falls into the same trap himself as sentence after that, when he applauds the idea that atheists are unlike religion, in that they favor science, reason, and secularism. I assume he does not notice that science is a unique product of Christendom: neither the ancient Greek nor the modern East made progress in science, because they did not have the concept of one rational Creator arranging nature according to a rational system. Was Newton not a scientist? He makes a similar arrogant mistake about reason. Was Aquinas not a paragon of logic?
The problem the atheists have in trying to portray their world view as the reasonable alternative to religion, is that religion, in the long run, is more reasonable. It is reasonable to be good in a world where an invisible sky-father sees and punishes bad acts: even a child can grasp this notion. It is reasonable to be hopeful in a world where this world is not the end of the story, hopeful even in a foxhole where the logical atheist, like the Roman stoic, might decide suicide was the only honorable course left. It is reasonable to suppose that the mind of man can deduce a priori synthetic conclusions about the outside world based on the innate human categories of thought, if and only if the same creator who made man and the mind of man made the world and the logic of the world, and the common creator created them according to the same rules of logic. An atheist can tell me that my sense-perceptions agree with each other, that is, that they are coherent, but he cannot tell me whether they are accurate, that is, whether the phenomena reflect the noumena. Theology can answer that question, and answer it with a rigorous a logic from its first principles.
The question is, what is the minimum set of self-evident axioms or first principles an atheist must admit in order to have a reasonable reason to be a moral and reasonable person? If he has to make a more farfetched assumption, or a more complex assumption, than the deist who posits a benevolent omnipotence exists, the principle of parsimony would favor the second assumption.
Personally, I think an argument can be made that the laws of morality are self-evident in principle (even if complex in application) from the moment one makes the inquiry into whether morality exists or not. The mere act of making the inquiry presupposes at least one moral rule: honesty. If morality does not exist, one need not answer the question honestly. On the other hand, if one set about to answer the question with the honesty of a philosopher, then one already knows that honesty is a rule, whether one knows why one knows or not.
In any case, Christians are as reasonable as anyone else, and more reasonable than some. If God indeed does not exist, we are unreasonable and gullible to pretend He exists; but if He does exist, it is unreasonable and arrogant not to admit it.
(if you click through the link, you will see what is perhaps the oldest atheist jeremiad in history, allegedly from 1200’s, but perhaps from the early 1900’s. Teh first sentence sets the tone “However important it may be for all men to know the Truth, very few, nevertheless, are acquainted with it, because the majority are incapable of searching it themselves, or perhaps, do not wish the trouble. ” i.e. The writer is inviting the reader into the delicious secret that everyone on Earth is stupid, but for you, dear reader, and me.)
I am making a much more humble claim here. Mr. Sawyer thinks atheists would be better off if they presented themselves in a less arrogant fashion. I am saying, right or wrong, for good or ill, logic says that the atheist has to reject all theism as foolishness, no matter how respected the theist is in other fields. And maintaining that you are smarter than people smarter than you is the very soul of arrogance. Atheists should be arrogant and should be proud of their arrogance: they have no logical reason to do otherwise.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
