National Review on the New Atheists


The neoconservative magazine National Review has used the recent decision by San Francisco radio station KPFA to disinvite Richard Dawkins from an interview to publish an article by Elliot Kaufman that takes aim at atheists. It consists essentially of two points. Firstly it argues that ‘the left’ has ‘expelled’ the New Atheists like Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens because of their “insufficient deference to Islam” and secondly that their arguments against god’s existence are wrong. Kaufman even goes on to say that ‘the left’s’ dislike of Islamophobia has morphed into a defense of Islamic radicalism and thus have joined “a long line of left-wing apologists for murderous anti-Western regimes”. (Thanks to reader Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write for alerting me to this article.)

I know of no atheists who are demanding more deference to Islam. Islam is as bad a religion as any, in that its adherents can use it to justify attacking others. As we have seen, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and Christians can and do behave similarly, and different times and different places bring the evils of different religions into the spotlight. What many of us are concerned about are not criticisms of Islam but criticisms that blur the line between criticisms of the religion and attacks on Muslims as people. We have criticized Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (especially the latter two) for intemperate remarks that have been used as fodder by anti-Muslim bigots to stir up hatred and even violence against Muslims. The fact that groups like ISIS and al Qaeda use Islam as their justification for their actions is no more relevant than that the Lord’s Army uses Christianity for its atrocities or that militant Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish religious groups invoke the same kind of religious justifications for their own intolerance. What it shows is that religion has the ability to convince people to commit horrible acts while feeling that they are doing something noble.

There is much to criticize about those three that have little to do with their views on Islam. Hitchens had been a cheerleader of the wars initiated by Bush-Cheney in the Middle East and Asia. Remember his statement about bombing Afghanistan OUT of the Stone Age? Ha! Ha! Typical Hitchens wit! I am sure that 16 years later, the Afghans still at the receiving end of bombardment and living among the ensuing rubble are wiping away tears of laughter when they recall his words. Harris has taken a whole host of awful positions on torture, US imperialism, and racial profiling. (Cue Harris’s supporters saying that I am deliberately misinterpreting his views by taking them out of context.) Dawkins is not nearly as bad but has made glib remarks that have denigrated feminist concerns and the transgender community and then dug in his heels when it was pointed out. So there are plenty of reasons for atheists to distance themselves from that trio that have nothing to do with demanding “deference to Islam”. Atheists and ‘the left’ can and should criticize other atheists who take reprehensible stances.

Kaufman then goes on to argue that the New Atheist criticisms of god’s existence are wrong-headed, bringing up as support David Bentley Hart, the master of vague theological theorizing. Kaufman says:

Truth be told, New Atheism was always fundamentally unserious. It does not even try to address the theistic arguments for the existence of God.

Battering a fundamentalist straw-man with an equally fundamentalist materialism, New Atheism is one big category error. Over and over, its progenitors demand material proof for the existence of God, as if He were just another type of thing — a teacup, or perhaps an especially powerful computer.

This confusion leads the New Atheists to favor the rather elementary infinite-regress argument: If God created everything, then who created God? But as the theologian David Bentley Hart replies:

[God is] not a ‘supreme being,’ not another thing within or alongside the universe, but the infinite act of being itself, the one eternal and transcendent source of all existence and knowledge, in which all finite being participates. . . . Only a complete failure to grasp the most basic philosophical terms of the conversation could prompt this strange inversion of logic, by which the argument from infinite regress—traditionally and correctly regarded as the most powerful objection to pure materialism—is now treated as an irrefutable argument against belief in God.

Sophisticated theologians love to accuse atheists of committing a category error as if that is a slam-dunk argument. But simply asserting that his god is not a thing is not an argument. If it is not an entity, then what is it? Is it merely an idea, a meme, a creation of the mind that has no agency? If so, I would agree. But these apologists, after saying their god is not a thing in order to avoid providing any evidence for it because they cannot, then turn around and treat it like a thing that has agency.

I discussed a few years ago Hart’s arguments about how we are attacking the wrong kind of god (see here and here and here) and why I don’t find them at all convincing. Hart is a master of theology-speak, writing stuff like this:

The most venerable metaphysical claims about God do not simply shift priority from one kind of thing (say, a teacup or the universe) to another thing that just happens to be much bigger and come much earlier (some discrete, very large gentleman who preexists teacups and universes alike). These claims start, rather, from the fairly elementary observation that nothing contingent, composite, finite, temporal, complex, and mutable can account for its own existence, and that even an infinite series of such things can never be the source or ground of its own being, but must depend on some source of actuality beyond itself. Thus, abstracting from the universal conditions of contingency, one very well may (and perhaps must) conclude that all things are sustained in being by an absolute plenitude of actuality, whose very essence is being as such: not a “supreme being,” not another thing within or alongside the universe, but the infinite act of being itself, the one eternal and transcendent source of all existence and knowledge, in which all finite being participates.

So Hart’s god is supposedly not a thing but is instead “an absolute plenitude of actuality” and “the one eternal and transcendent source of all existence and knowledge, in which all finite being participates”. That certainly clears things up!

These sophisticated theologians realize that they cannot provide any evidence for their god so they argue that their god is the kind of being that does not require evidence. How convenient! But they do not come right out and say that their god is just a mental construct either. So what is it exactly? They basically dress up the old ‘god as the prime mover argument ‘ and then use wooly language like an “absolute plenitude of actuality” to avoid the problem of infinite regress, the ‘Then who created god?’ problem and to avoid awkward questions of how their god acts in the world.

Comments

  1. Bruce says

    To me, the best response to such theologians is asking how many people believe as they do. Is their religion one that is believed by three billion people, or by just three people? If it is the religion of three billion people, then almost none of them would accept, in practice, such a nebulous concept of their god, as being not a creature that could hear a prayer, for example. But if this is the theology of the three people who would talk and think as the theologian does, then it is largely irrelevant to any discussions of views of significance.
    Sure, the billions would all be glad to say they support some hand-waving that supports them. But they can’t have a dialog to agree on specifics without diverging before they can agree.

  2. sonofrojblake says

    I know of no atheists who are demanding more deference to Islam

    That’s your lead-in to this post, but it’s a straw man. You say yourself -- the ones accused of demanding more deference to Islam are the nebulous “left”. And you simply can’t claim with a straight face that nobody on “the left” is demanding more deference to Islam.

    If you can’t think of an example of your own, how about this nonsense? https://freethoughtblogs.com/anjuli/2017/07/30/pride-in-the-council-of-ex-muslims-of-britain/

  3. says

    sonofrojblake@#2:
    That’s one reason I try to avoid the left/right label (or other labels in general) -- it leaves one open to accusations of overgeneralizing (because that’s what labelling is)

    If you can’t think of an example of your own, how about this nonsense? https://freethoughtblogs.com/anjuli/2017/07/30/pride-in-the-council-of-ex-muslims-of-britain/

    #notallfreethoughtbloggers
    I have no idea what Anjuli is doing on the FTB platform, to be frank. Thunderfoot2.0?

  4. Pierce R. Butler says

    I know of no atheists who are demanding more deference to Islam…

    Quite a few demand more respect for rights of Muslims, which as seen from the august towers and amygdalae of the National Review amounts to the same scary thing, the bootprint of Political Correctness on their pin-striped trousers, again…

  5. Chiroptera says

    Bruce, #1: To me, the best response to such theologians is asking how many people believe as they do.

    Another is to point out that they’re not really talking about God any more.

    Or maybe that’s close to the point you just made.

  6. lanir says

    Hart’s arguments seem to capture the atmosphere of the unfathomable mysteries the xtians built into their deity and pair it with an inversion of the made-up deity atheists see, instead having the entire universe and all within it be no more than a dream of said deity. Basically restated it comes out to: “It’s not that my deity isn’t real, it’s that and you don’t understand him. Furthermore, you’re only as real as my deity wants you to be. If he’s not real, neither are you!”

    Has me curious whether Hart’s ideas came out before or after the holographic principle (the one about information storage in black holes, sorry if I mangled the name) started getting public notice.

  7. se habla espol says

    Having run into the ‘thing’ argument, I bypass it by referring to gods as “phenomena”. Having run into theosophical arguments about whether gods exist in the universe or outside the universe, I refer to them as “phenomena of the universe of existents”. No theobabbler has ever tried to answer my challenge for a definition of god sufficient to be able, at least in principle, to distinguish, in the universe of existents, between a god and a non-god. One of them did try to argue that a definitipn is not needed, since when it coes to gods, it’s ok not to know what they’re babbling about.

  8. Tillerman says

    Mano: What many of us are concerned about are not criticisms of Islam but criticisms that blur the line between criticisms of the religion and attacks on Muslims as people.

    No doubt that it is somewhat “problematic” that many do in fact attack “Muslims as people”. However, you might note that many other people – Muslims, ex-Muslims, and atheists – quite justifiably take “moderate” Muslims to task for their contributions to the depredations of their less rational and civilized co-religionists. For instances, there is this argument by Muslim reformer and Trump supporterAsra Nomani [1]:

    When Rupert Murdoch recently tweeted, “Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible,” he was criticized for indelicately saying all Muslims were responsible for the acts of a few. But I do believe we bear collective responsibility for the problems in our communities.

    Indeed. And then there is this synopsis or paraphrase of the “moderate” Muslim position by the “atheist-Muslim” and Pakistani-Canadian doctor, Ali Rizi [2]:

    “I am a ‘moderate’ Muslim. I don’t believe in misogyny, murder, or homophobia. I just deeply revere the book that endorses them.”

    And finally, although there are many other similar and equally justified perspectives, there is this quite cogent analysis from UKIP leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters[3]:

    On the second point, while I appreciate the sentiment in theory, it doesn’t work in reality. The separation of ideology from people isn’t practicable; it again presents people as innocents, and ideologies alone as harmful. But that doesn’t make any sense. Ideas do not exist independently of people. It is people who give birth to ideas and it is people who put them in to practice. While an idea may be repulsive – such as burying a person up to their chest and throwing stones at their head until they die – the idea itself will cause no harm unless there are people willing to throw the stones. The Koran may contain verses urging the killing of non-believers, but if I put a Koran on a shelf and leave it there, it will cause no damage. It is only when people pick up the book and implement its commands that the problems begin.

    Remarkably “unwise” if not manifestly suicidal to be letting “moderates” of any religion, but particularly Islam, off the hook for the barbarisms “endorsed” by their “holy books” [ha!]

    —--
    1) “_https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-the-honor-brigade-an-organized-campaign-to-silence-critics-of-islam/2015/01/16/0b002e5a-9aaf-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?utm_term=.1f3298fe06c0”;
    2) “_https://twitter.com/aliamjadrizvi/status/529484177809604608”;
    3) “_https://www.weneedtotalkaboutislam.com/single-post/2016/10/11/Internationalism-will-continue-to-erode-and-destroy-ancient-European-civilizations”;

  9. Mano Singham says

    Tillerman,

    Although your last comment says that we should not be “letting “moderates” of any religion, but particularly Islam, off the hook for the barbarisms “endorsed” by their “holy books””, only lip service is given to that sentiment to any religion other than Islam. Why aren’t all the ‘moderate Christians’ castigated for not getting rid of the many extremists in their midst?

    Quoting with approval Rupert Murdoch, an utterly venal individual and someone who has arguably done immense harm to millions of people even if he has not murdered them directly, does not help your case. Why aren’t ‘moderate Christians’ held accountable for the fact that Murdoch is allowed to constantly spew his hate and venom uninhibited? Aren’t all the people who consume his media products condoning his behavior?

    And in the other quote “I am a ‘moderate’ Muslim. I don’t believe in misogyny, murder, or homophobia. I just deeply revere the book that endorses them”, the word Muslim could be replaced with pretty much any other major religion and the sentiment would still hold true.

    The same argument holds true for the quote by Anne Marie Waters, if you replace the Koran with the Bible.

    The fact is that only ‘moderate Muslims’ are expected to constantly identify, weed out, and publicly denounce their fellow religionists who commit atrocities. ‘Moderate’ members of other religions are just allowed to live their lives without any negative inferences drawn from this.

  10. Tillerman says

    Mano: Why aren’t all the ‘moderate Christians’ castigated for not getting rid of the many extremists in their midst.

    Maybe because Christian extremists aren’t throwing gays off roof-tops, stoning women to death for adultery, and murdering people left-right-and-center for blasphemy and apostasy? You may wish to take a look at the “Terrorist attacks” section of this Wikipedia article [1], sort on “Political ideology”, and note the prepondance of deaths due to “Islamic extremism”; nice graphic summary here [2]

    Mano: Quoting with approval Rupert Murdoch, an utterly venal individual ….

    Kind of looks like you never bothered to read further than “Rupert Murdoch” before reacting in shock and horror to the name, and didn’t notice that a well-regarded woman-Muslim-reformer, Asra Nomani, basically endorsed the principle or concept that he had articulated. Kind of looks like judging a book by its cover.

    And I kind of doubt that you bothered to read anything in the link I provided to an article in the Washington Post by Nomani where she had quoted Murdoch. Given that she has played a pivotal, and entirely commendable, role in promoting some necessary reforms [3] in Islam, although I think she is kind of barking up the wrong tree, I figure you may wish to give some credence to her arguments.

    Mano: … in “I am a ‘moderate’ Muslim …” the word Muslim could be replaced with pretty much any other major religion and the sentiment would still hold true.

    Yes, I agree. And I’ve seen other people respond to Rizvi’s tweet with that same argument. However, I think that more or less ignores the rather problematic fact that the “religion” of Islam is fundamentally and intrinsically “not like the other ones”. For corroboration, among a surfeit of it, you may wish to take a look at a post by “islamopologist” and Muslim Shadi Hamid [4] who basically argued that “Islam is fundamentally different from other religions in a very specific way: its relationship to law and politics and governance”, and that it “will continue to be resistant to secularism and secularization really for the rest of our lives”.

    And more or less underlining that point is this rather cogent summary of the problem by FTBer Anjuli Pandavar [5] – who, I note in passing, seems not to find much favour in this somewhat benighted neck of the woods as some here apparently wish to tar her with the “alt-right” brush despite being “a person of colour”, gay, and Marxist-leaning:

    Pandavar: The UDHR and the CDHRI: Their Ideals and Ours

    It is one of the enduring myths of the great liberal delusion that all people aspire to the same values as the values of the Enlightenment. Our ideals, flowing from the Enlightenment, include universal Human Rights and equality for all. So firmly is this ideal built into our psyche that we measure our societal worth by our insistence on pursuing this ideal without exception (barring exceptions, of course). It should not be necessary to point out that these are my ideals, too. I may further add that I hold these ideals to be superior to anything else humanity has hitherto devised.

    It is, however, inescapable that Human Rights and equality for all are not ideals that all people share. What is more, significant sections of humanity are actively opposed to them. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the ideal of equality for all human beings are so strongly opposed by so many, that no fewer than 45 states signed the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), adopted in 1990, expressly to challenge the universality of the UDHR, and specifically its applicability to Muslims, and to instead safeguard the pre-mediaeval and inhuman Shari’a as the framework for human relations and interactions. It is neither a slight nor an insult to say that Muslims do not hold to the UDHR as an ideal, on the contrary, it is an affirmation.

    Given all of that, and much else besides that one could easily cite, one might reasonably argue that it is a recipe for disaster, if not bordering on suicidal, for Western countries to allow, as Waters put it in that earlier linked article, “mass permanent immigration from Muslim majority countries”.

    Mano: …. ‘Moderate’ members of other religions are just allowed to live their lives without any negative inferences drawn from this.

    Don’t think that that is a particularly tenable argument. Dawkins and many other atheists and secularists, as you and many others have noted, have been noisily raising the alarums over religion for some time – and to some effect. For instance, you might check out a Quillette post [6], The Josiah Effect: How Moderate Religion Fuels Fundamentalism, as an illustration of an awareness of the problem of “moderates” in general.

    No doubt, many on the right are far too quick to throw stones at Muslims while studiously ignoring or being blind to the fact that their own rather dogmatic adherence to a fundamentalist Christianity, and Judaism, is equally problematic. I have some hope, if of a rather wan nature, that the issues of Islam and Muslim immigration will provide an opportunity to question and discuss a general over-reliance on untenable dogma, particularly of a religious nature.

    I kind of think that there is some value in “religion” in general – “where there is no vision the people perish” – but only if it is of a largely metaphorical or hypothetical nature. Many people – from Thomas Acquinas [7] to Thomas Huxley [8] to Douglas Murray to Greta Vosper [9] – have pointed to the problematic aspects of a literalist conception of “gawd”, and the latter has quite reasonably argued that “Those who recognize the Bible’s claim [and the Quran’s claim] to be the [literal] word of God as the monster in the tub with the baby, are the ones who must throw that monster out with the bathwater”.

    Indeed.

    —--
    1) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_and_other_violent_events_by_death_toll#Terrorist_attacks”;
    2) “_https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DF9uhVIU0AAUR4o.jpg”;
    3) “_https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7009/muslim-reform-movement”;
    4) “_http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/08/shadi_hamid_on_islamic_exceptionalism.html”;
    5) “_https://freethoughtblogs.com/anjuli/2017/04/01/the-udhr-and-the-cdhri-their-ideals-and-ours/”;
    6) “_http://quillette.com/2016/06/14/the-josiah-effect-how-moderate-religion-fuels-fundamentalism/”;
    7) “_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_unius_libri”;
    8) “_http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE4/”;
    9) “_http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/new-views-of-christ/”;

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