I Liked the Old Atheists Better

Stephen Prothero, a scholar of religion at BU, recently wrote a book titled God Is Not One. It is mostly an interesting read and is essentially a brief tour of major world religions with the intent of highlighting their differences. He includes a chapter on atheism which, while not a religion, is nonetheless an important and influential worldview (some contemporary forms of atheism, however, do seem very much like a religion).

Atheism is not new. It has been a significant intellectual viewpoint since at least the ancient Greeks, though atheists have always been in the minority. Prothero points out that some of greatest intellectuals (e.g. Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre) as well as some of the worst dictators (Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot) have been atheists. The so called "New Atheists" (e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) have given a new public face to atheism and have written some of the best-selling books of the past decade. Prothero observes that this particular group of atheists seems to be very religious, holding their beliefs "with the conviction of zealots and evangelizing with verve." Chris Hedges, a former writer for the New York Times, sees the New Atheists as a "secular version of the Religious Right." These self-proclaimed freethinkers end up being just as hate-filled, bigoted, and dogmatic as the religious fundamentalists they usually take aim at.

Prothero writes, "One of history's most dangerous games begins with dividing the world into the good guys and the bad guys and ends with using any means necessary to take the villains out. New Atheists play this game with brio, demonizing Muslims, denouncing Christians and Jews as dupes, and baptizing their fellow "brights" into their own communion of smarter-than-thou saints. Like fundamentalists and cowboys, they live in a Manichean world in which the forces of light are engaged in a great apocalyptic battle against the forces of darkness. They, too, are dogmatic and uncurious and every bit as useful to neoconservative policymakers as right wing televangelists."

Prothero asks why we can't recognize that we can just as easily kill in the name of progress (the French Revolution and the brutal dictatorships of Stalin and Lenin come to mind) as in the name of God. Sam Harris actually writes, "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." The problem here is the strange but seemingly attractive notion that it is OK to be ultra-dogmatic and aggressive as long as you are "right." To me, the Spanish Inquisition would still not be acceptable even if the Roman Catholic Church's dogma was correct and the heretics indeed held false beliefs.

Prothero also mentions an interesting tidbit about the French New Atheist Michel Onfray. Onfray accuses fellow atheists like Dawkins and Dennett of being "Christian atheists." In other words, these atheists embrace Western moral values (which are predominantly Judeo-Christian) while rejecting Christianity and Judaism. Onfray, to my mind, is a bit more honest when he follows Nietzsche and insists that if atheism is true then there is no need for man to follow conventional morality. Onfray too recognizes the religiosity of many of today's atheists, writing (quoted by Prothero):

"The tactics of some secular figures seem contaminated by the enemy's ideology: many militants in the secular cause look astonishingly like clergy. Worse: like caricatures of clergy. Unfortunately, contemporary freethinking often carries a waft of incense; it sprinkles itself shamelessly with holy water."

Prothero doesn't only discuss St. Dawkins and St. Hitchens, though. He also tells the story of Amanda Gulledge, an "Alabama mom" and an atheist whose children have been shunned by other neighborhood children because they "haven't accepted Jesus as their Savior." Gulledge spoke at an atheist conference Prothero attended, and he noted the sharp contrast between the apparent goals of the more public New Atheists and "normal" atheists like her. One group wants to eradicate religion from the planet and the other wants atheism to be considered a valid viewpoint "deserving of a fair hearing." Prothero further contrasts the two different approaches in terms of the gay rights movement: "One is like trying to turn everyone gay and the other is like trying to secure equal rights for homosexuals."

I appreciate Amanda Gulledge's story, and I am ashamed that Christians would treat children like they have treated Amanda's children. I find it much harder to appreciate what the New Atheists seem to bring to the table: angry, overblown rhetoric and an astonishing level of close-minded, self-righteous hubris. I like how Prothero closes his chapter:

"I wouldn't walk around the block to hear Christopher Hitchens take cheap shots at Christians. But I'd get on the subway, and maybe even a plane, to hear Amanda Gulledge tell me why her kids are good people too."
  

On Omnipotence

The following essay was written in late spring 2008 during an episode of Lost. A master's student at UConn (where my wife is studying English lit) found out that I was a Christian and promptly asked questions like "can God create a square circle"? My quick answers needed some fleshing out, hence this essay. I don't think I have actually read any professional philosophers' take on these questions, so I welcome any comments or corrections.

A traditional objection to the possibility of God’s omnipotence (and therefore the existence of the Judaeo-Christian God) comes in the form of a question: can God create a rock so big that he can’t lift it? Or, another: can God create a square circle? The fact that it is difficult (or impossible) to answer these questions is supposed to demonstrate that an omnipotent being could not exist. How serious are these objections? Let’s take a look at the latter question first.

Wittgenstein, the 20^th century Austrian philosopher, took the view (for a time, at least) that many of the problems of philosophy were actually problems with language. While it seems obvious that not all problems of philosophy reduce to a matter of unclear language, at least some problems can genuinely be seen as merely illusions due to language. The idea of a square circle is supposed to pose an unsolvable problem for an omnipotent being, demonstrating that such a being could not exist. Upon closer inspection, asking an omnipotent being to create a square circle is very much like asking them nothing at all. What is a square circle? It is not a thing. These two words joined together in the English language simply do not mean anything. We should not be bothered, then, by the fact that an omnipotent being cannot create a non-thing we pretend exists by stringing together two words. I can imagine someone demanding that God create a square circle, or else they won’t believe that he is omnipotent. One may as well stand before God and demand that he “couch shave while plant big in beer toe.” If he can’t, so much for God. I think the problem is that "square" and "circle" are such simple words that it is easy to pretend such a small phrase is intelligible when in fact it is no more intelligible than the above beer toe example. The phrase is literally nonsense and as such cannot tell us anything about God.

What about the first question? Can God create a rock so big that he can’t lift it? This objection seems to be the stronger of the two. Assuming the existence of such a being, obviously the answer must be either God can create a rock so big that he can’t lift it, or that God can’t create a rock so big that he can’t lift it. So perhaps the question should be which answer should be true for God to be as omnipotent as is logically possible. Let’s see. Would it be more impressive if God could create a rock that he then could not lift, or if God created the heaviest rock possible but could still lift it?

First, the very form of this question is problematic, as we are assuming that God has a physical body subject to physical laws (e.g. gravity). The heaviest rock possible? There is no logical limit to how massive an object may be; infinite mass is a possibility. This makes the question difficult to answer sensibly. I suggest a reformulation; this question, at its base, is asking: can an omnipotent being impose limits of power on itself? Imagine it this way: an omnipotent being creates maximally strong unbreakable (and let's say metaphysical too) handcuffs for itself and then cannot escape. Or, the being creates maximally strong unbreakable handcuffs for itself and then breaks them. It is clear that if an omnipotent being could impose limits of power on itself that it would only be taking away from its own omnipotence (e.g. if it could not break the handcuffs). Logically then, an omnipotent being cannot take away its own power without violating its own omnipotence. On the other hand, why couldn’t such a being willingly impose limits on itself? If it then decreases its own power, so what? How does any of this suggest that such a being could not exist? At best it suggests that we should approach the term “omnipotence” with care. Perhaps an omnipotent being’s omnipotence is tentative, contingent on its will. Or perhaps no matter what God does he could always later undo it.

Either way, it is not clear to me that these objections go very far in arguing against the existence of God (or superbeings in general).