This may well amount to blasphemy on the SHAFT blog, but I have never really found ‘New Atheism,’ as represented by Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., to be very convincing or appealing. To be fair, by many standards, I am a pretty lousy atheist: I have a soft spot for theology; I am skeptical of any attempt to enshrine science or pure rationality as the determiners of truth; and I have doubts about whether rationally proving God’s nonexistence is possible.
But for me, The God Delusion and similar books essentially present atheism as a negation. They leave me feeling like I did when I first abandoned theism: the feeling that something had been lost; that the numinous had been emptied out of the world; that, rather than a newfound freedom to create a new way of living, I now found myself having to conform my beliefs and actions to a strictly rational, materialist worldview, one which seemed little less stifling than the God I had left behind.
It is with that caveat that I mention Hubert Dreyfus’ and Sean Dorrance Kelly’s All Things Shining, published earlier this year. Its project is probably best described as ‘post-theism’: Dreyfus and Kelley attempt to create a secular practice of living—a religion, if you will—where the sacred erupts in moments as diverse as examining an artwork or watching a baseball game.
Part of what makes their argument fascinating is the way it reclaims much of western culture and even religious thinkers for secularism: from Homer to the Gospel of John to Martin Luther, Dreyfus and Kelly draw on theistic thought while giving it a secular, decidedly nontheistic spin—a method I think is preferable and richer than dismissing it all out of hand. The book, based on their popular undergraduate class at Berkeley, is intended for the general readership, and is somewhat cursory in its argument. Despite that limitation, and some quibbles about their interpretations of Nietzsche, I found the book exhilarating—for me, it was the most thought-provoking book I have read on atheism since Martin Hägglund’s.
It also left me wondering, however, if these two strands of atheism—with the ‘post-theism’ of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida on the one hand, and the ‘rational atheism’ of Hume, Russell, and the ‘New Atheists’ on the other—are starry-eyed apples and glowering oranges. Do they merely serving different purposes, or are they actually incommensurable?
What do you think, SHAFT-ers?
I don’t understand the first paragraph. The truth is determined by observation, but individual observation alone leaves us open to all sorts of biases and fallacies. Science is just the application of rationality in the real world in order to remove those biases. Science is not a construct we made up for determining the truth, it’s the logical end to a line of questioning.
You can tell how good a system is at determining truth by the accuracy of the predictions it makes. When you can navigate a tiny little probe through the solar system, accounting for the gravity of 8 planets, their moons, asteroids, and other bodies, and get that little probe to land exactly where you want millions upon millions of miles away, you’ve thoroughly demonstrated that your “science” is accurate. When you predict Jesus will return before you die and then get in a gun battle with a mob and get killed, you’ve demonstrated that your system of determining truth is not accurate. Science makes predictions and proves them all day long, and if something can’t be proven it is thrown out.
And one last thing. Disproving the existence of god is not a scientific exercise. You learn that you can’t prove a negative in grade school science. If that is what you think Dawkins and Hitchens are trying to do then you thoroughly misunderstand science. Knowing that, I think I understand why you went wrong when you seemed to equate science and theology as equally valid systems for determining truth.
Dawkins and Hitchens are not atheists because they believe they’ve proved god doesn’t exist. They are atheist because, while they recognize the possibility that god exists, they put it on the same level of probability as Thor or Odin or Amen Ra existing, or all of us living in the Matrix. The default position is to not believe in something until you have a good rational reason the believe it. Believing in god is not exception. You need a positive line of evidence, not just the absence of disproof.
If all of the religions suddenly disappeared from the world tomorrow and nobody had any memory of them and there were no records, the same religions we have now would not spontaneously exist again. We might have other religions replace them, but they won’t be the same religions and they won’t claim exactly the same things. If all science were to be lost tomorrow, someone would come along and figure out all the exact same stuff again. That is why science is superior to theology as a system for determining truth.
Johan,
I appreciate your comments. Clearly this format won’t afford adequate space to respond to all your statements. Let me merely point out where we differ.
a) Your first few paragraphs exhibits many of shortcomings 20th century philosophy has rightly found with science: the assumption that truth is a state of affairs that exists independently of a human subject or mode of inquiry, that science is somehow an uncreated, ex nihilo paradigm for removing all bias, etc. Because science is system of knowlege and epistemology (and, as you say, a ‘line of questioning’), it at least partially constructs the data it finds–as even many scientists will remind you. I am not suggesting that science is not better than other many other approaches, nor that its findings are invalid; it is merely the claim often made for science–that it is the universal verifier or definer of truth–that I find problematic. I acknowledge, however, that a large part of the problem is our contrasting notions of what ‘truth’ means, and that is not an easy gap to bridge.
b) I can understand why you thought I was claiming that Dawkins et al are attempting to prove God doesn’t exist; but I never make that claim. I would amend my statement to read: “I have doubts about whether rationalistic arguments for God’s non-existence are always desirable,” a point I cannot discuss at length here. I never said theology was an equally valid system for finding truth, as you insinuate.
c) Finally, the grade school idea that you can’t prove a negative is, well, for grade school–it is a crude overgeneralization that is frequently and justifiably ignored. I would also add that your belief about the non-scientific nature of the question of God is not one shared by Dawkins, for example. Dawkins has made clear that he believes the ‘God hypothesis’ to be disprovable in the way that the majority of scientific hypotheses are evaluated: their probability in light of the evidence. Please attribute the ‘misunderstanding of science’ which you accuse me of to him, if you wish.
Please let me know if I have misread you in any way.
Ben
I guess the unsatisfied feeling you get listening to Dawkins or Hitchen may be because those two along with Sam Harris spend much of their time rebutting against the Judeo-Christian theism conception of god. I think it’s the reason why atheism doesn’t usually light people’s fire. It doesn’t facilitate a rallying point idea where people will easily root for.
Perhaps it’d help if we try to figure out what exactly people think ‘god’ is… as in specific definition. I can be an atheist or a theist depending on how ‘god’ is defined. I can believe in god if it is defined as ‘nature itself’ or ‘the most fundamental law of nature, the master equation from which the universe and everything in it developed from’, but that is not a human-like emotional irrational god that the religious texts allude to, and it isn’t one that could care or hear or answer prayers. I feel quite secure and comfy with that notion of a ‘god’, especially when I’m out enjoying nature.
The god that the religious texts seem to describe, though, I don’t believe in. It talks like a human quack, it behaves like a human quack… it is the product of human quacks.
On the other hand, Buddhism is an atheistic religion (Buddha isn’t considered a god or a divined being, just a great teacher who has reached nirvana and is no longer being reborn… you know, that reincarnation thingy), and it seems to produce less warlike imperialistic devotees like the monotheistic religions do.
I don’t think the two ideas are entirely mutually exclusive. There is probably significant overlap between the two.
I dont know the difference between new/old atheism, but I am an atheist for sure.
I believe in what i can touch, feel and prove. Religion/Belief is fine, but I only laugh of people believing that there is someone as god
In response to your comment about “new atheism” being more of a critique of theism than anything else, I would say that this is the correct way to approach the subject. You cannot, as you say, prove the positive claim that there is no God, just as one cannot prove the positive claim that there are no invisible, intangible, inaudible, pink unicorns floating around.
Atheism is not a belief, it’s the lack of one. Atheism makes no claims, it simply refuses to accept the claim that there is a God without evidence to support it. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is the non-acceptance of a proposed philosophy. Just as I would not expect the (assumed) fact that you are an a-fairyist to provide you with any moral guidance, I do not expect your atheism to do the same.
The new atheist are filling a roll that I think is important, being that of showing atheism to be the only rational position to take, but for atheist moral teachers you will have to look elsewhere. Sadly, Carl Sagan is dead, but we still have his books and videos. Perhaps now we need to look to David Attenborough, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Daniel Dennet.
Apt comments from everyone. I certainly do think there are common aims that both strands of atheism–which I am now inclined to call ‘big-A’ Atheism (Dawkins, etc) and post-theism (Nietzsche et al)–can agree on and work toward; but the differences are huge, and they come down to very different ideas about the world, truth, and the optimal kind of human existence. Some thoughts:
1. Smorg’s comment about defining ‘God’ is a good one, since post-theism’s conception of God entails more than big-A Atheism’s. Furthermore, losing God for post-theism causes a loss of a sacred/meaning-filled sense of the world, a loss that must be replaced with something else. With Dawkins, one doesn’t get any sense of ‘losing’ something when we lose God. (And, I might add, for some post-theists, God in a larger sense of ‘an absolute truth about the world’–has still not died for Dawkins).
2. Tysic, your definition of atheism is good in many ways, and allows for common ground. And the thinkers you’ve mentioned have made great contributions to what a secular ethics would look like. Perhaps we would be better served by trying to find ways of creating positive moral philosophies out of atheism, and showing why those philosophies are *ethically* more desirable, rather than just railing against theism? Smear campaigns can be effective, but not if you’ve failed to show why your product is better–and I suspect that for many, it’s not so much that a belief in God makes the best sense, but that it seems so much more desirable.
If thought The God Delusion presents atheism as a negation, perhaps you didn’t read it very carefully. Not only does he specifically define the god he is arguing against, but he really bends over backwards pointing out that you can’t “prove” the non-existence of anything, let alone something as poorly defined as “god” is in the 21′s century.
I’ve tried really hard to understand the difference between “new atheists” and “post theism” but have really struggled. I mainly see arguments like “new atheists (Dawkins et al) think they have disproved god”, or “well new atheists are like a religion” etc. etc.
Both Dawkins and Harris bend over backwards dealing with such criticism, and I have yet to see any argument that didn’t misrepresent what they say (at best). One things for certain, so called “new atheism” has changed the field completely, in a good way.
I’m not sure if it’s in the best interest of the discussion that I contribute so much, but so be it.
Jon, you’re right to say New Atheism has changed a lot. But I think you may have misunderstood me. When I say ‘atheism of negation’, it refers not a lack of argumentative rigor, but to the approach taken: the bulk of the effort is spent arguing against God’s existence, rather than trying to construct a new, distinctively non-theistic life-ethic. Now, in my opinion, on the rare occasions that Dawkins et al. do offer ideas about what human existence should be like without God, they can only offer up the status quo, either of scientific knowledge or the values of secular liberal democracy. Their atheism is a ‘negation’ of one position (theism) without any serious effort to fill the void left behind with a new way of existing in the world. Part of the difficulty, I imagine, is that they don’t fully understand that something is lost when religion is lost–a source of meaning, a basis of interpersonal relations–something that, for all the evil it has caused, did some good, and still needs to be compensated for by another way of living: a way which can avoid the pitfalls of theism while still preventing a slide into nihilism.
As for post-theism and New Atheism–let me give some of the bare outlines of what I feel post-theism looks like:
1. For post-theists, God is dead, which means, naturally, that he was alive in a sense. God for post-theists is less a being with an objective reality/non-reality than he is a construct of human society, a way of living geared towards a transcendental value. True, much of the world is as religious and God-believing as ever, but post-theists are speaking of a perspective that need not be shared to be actual. Many post-theists posit that ‘God’ represents any absolute value, universal purpose, or certain meaning of the world, and that any attempt to install one discourse (science, for example) as the sole determiner of the good or desirable installs a new kind of God by excluding a valuable and vital part of human life.
2. Post-theism is the response to the emptying out of God (and transcendent value) from the world; it seeks to re-think the conditions of morality, politics, and human life. Though it begins with a loss, it is a positive exercise of finding new ways of living, acting, and finding meaning. It is often not terribly interested in arguing against theism; it seeks to replace theism while preserving things–like beauty, art, emotional richness, and ethical feeling– that cannot be provided by pure science and pure rationality.
You can’t discredit the *ideas* of the New Atheists just because they aren’t emotionally satisfying. They’re not supposed to be. Hitchens isn’t even trying to entertain your fragile nerves.
Reality IS magic all by itself, says Dawkins in his new book. He’s doing a wonderful job breeding emotional appreciation for a materialistic (factual) world view in books like Unweaving the Rainbow too.