Why are atheists atheists?
So Julian turns up on Comment is free.
If there’s one thing philosophers are not in short supply of it’s confidence and self-esteem…The unexamined life, we are fond of repeating, is not worth living. It sounds very noble, until you realise that the subtext is that not only are the Big Brother-watching masses unfit for existence, but even those engaged in less fundamental academic pursuits are lower forms of life.
But is that the subtext? It depends how you decide what a subtext is, I guess (the subness of a subtext gives a certain leeway for accusing people of saying things they haven’t actually literally said, which can be interesting but unfair or fair but uninteresting or various other things), but I have doubts. Saying a life is not worth living is not the same thing as saying that people who have lives of that kind are unfit for existence – it could be, for instance (and is, surely), rather advice to people in general to try to have such a life, one that is within reach of anyone not incapacitated by illness or desperate poverty or the like. I don’t think it has to be read as necessarily an elitist bit of self-congratulation, any more than an enthusiastic recommendation of ‘Hamlet’ does.
Of course, Julian knows a lot more philosophers than I do, and maybe he’s speaking from experience; maybe they do swan around preening themselves on their examined lives and pitying everyone else. But I’m not sure that bromide about the unexamined life has to be read that way.
Formal schooling in philosophy tends to teach you to listen for just one thing: logical consistency. That is as wrong-headed as learning to listen only to the melody of a piece of music and to ignore harmony, rhythm, timbre, phrasing and the rest. I’ve increasingly noticed this in debates about religion. Many atheist philosophers seem to think the value and nature of religion is determined purely by the truth or falsity of its creeds, understood literally. Religion’s other dimensions – practice, attitude, form of life and so on – are ignored as irrelevant at best, and secondary at worst. As an atheist myself, I find this spiritual tone-deafness detrimental to the cause.
Hmmm. Well, again, Julian would know about atheist philosophers, but all the same – I’m not convinced that that amounts to spiritual deafness. In fact – this just occurred to me – if the truth and falsity of the creeds aren’t primary for Julian himself, then why is he an atheist? If he thinks practice, attitude, form of life ought to be primary along with the truth and falsity of the creeds, then couldn’t he just be a non-believing religious person?
That’s why atheists are atheists, isn’t it? It’s certainly why I am. Even when we do value the practice, attitude, form of life, singing, and the rest, we can’t and don’t want to sign up to the whole thing simply because we don’t believe it. The truth or falsity question is primary and everything else is secondary because it is (for those to whom it is). I can see that there’s more to talk about, but I’m not sure I can see why truth or falsity should be anything other than primary.
And apart from that, the idea that truth or falsity should modestly step back a little makes me uneasy. Doesn’t that just open the door to all those instrumentalist arguments for why religion is so wonderful? It’s good for your health, it makes you happier, it’s consoling (unless you think things through), it provides community, it motivates many people to be good, so never mind that it’s all an invention. But it’s very hard not to mind that, and it’s also not intellectually honest. Does that amount to spiritual deafness? I don’t think it does.
I think it is heathy to question the truth or falsity of religious claims,but what I often object to is the absolute refusal of some atheists to acknolledge that maybe there could be some value in the teachings of Christ.
What?
“Love your neighbour”?
Nothing wrong with that – it is an aspect of the “Golden Rule”.
Not that ANY christians I’ve come across recently subscribe to it.
In fact, it was the christians and muslims who have converted me from vaguely deistic thiesm to an outright atheist.
As I said in the responses section ot the Grauniad article …
” …it’s not what the religious SAY that is shite, it is what they DO.
And they are to be condemned for that.
Atheism has not been disgracing itself.
Religion has, but that is nothing new, either …..”
I’m starting to lose my once-enormous respect for Prof. Baggini. Here’s why:
Which atheist philosophers? Where? When? How many? Most, you say? I call bullshit! I am an atheist philosopher, I know atheist philosophers, and I’ve read lots of atheist philosophers. And Baggini’s claim here sounds a lot like… well, like the bloviating of all those people who haven’t actually read Dawkins but feel free to criticize him for things he doesn’t actually say.
Firstly, G. Tingey is dead right. Religious practice is very much a central concern for most atheists, philosophers and otherwise. But I’ll get back to that.
Secondly, to criticize faith as a means for accepting (or worse, “justifying”) truth claims – factual or normative – is to be concerned about very much more than just the truth or falsity of religious creeds. Every atheist philosopher I’ve ever read is concerned with the faulty bases for accepting creeds – authority, wishful thinking, revelation (which amounts to believing that the voices in your head speak the truth; or worse, believing that the voices in someone else’s head speak the truth), etc. As Prof. Baggini well knows, philosophy is all about argumentation – that is, we are concerned most primarily with how claims are justified. (And yes, as he points out, Socrates was a real bastard about showing people that their claims were not even remotely justified.) To say that an argument is flawed (that its conclusion is not justified) is not the same as saying that the conclusion is false: It simply means that the conclusion is not in fact supported by the argument, that the arguer lacks good reasons to accept it – because it could very damned well be utterly false (and downright foolish to boot) and you wouldn’t know it because you’re using faulty methods to reach conclusions. It might also be true – but only by accident, as it were.
And it can never be forgotten that creeds are not simply conclusions, not just abstract beliefs or irrelevant knowledge claims: What makes them “creeds” is that believers are supposed to live by them! And if the creeds are justified by faulty means – which is another way of saying that, from a critical thinking standpoint, they simply are not justified at all – then those who live by the creeds will be prone to commit all sorts of atrocious violations of reason, morality, and even sanity.
As they frequently do.
I swear, every time Julina Baggini says anything about these mysterious other atheists – you know, those bad militant atheists, from whom he is most emphatically different, he’s always careful to point out – he does more than set up and knock down a straw man. Whole armies of straw men are formed and fall before the sword of his overblown, mis-aimed rhetoric.
It’s very odd isn’t it? It’s almost as if JB is feeling guilty about having given potential atheists such excellent help with his Short Introduction and now wants to step back. It’s really depressing to have someone of his intellectual weight joining in with the hand-waving and the “But what would people do if they didn’t believe?” nonsense. And it ties in rather worryingly with his assumptions about the great unwashed…
“Religion’s other dimensions – practice, attitude, form of life and so on – are ignored as irrelevant at best, and secondary at worst.” -JB
No they aren’t. They’re social dimensions which are equally demostrable in religious and secular / non-religious societies. Religion has the monopoly on religious texts, the rest is human behaviour learned from thousands of years of often experimental interaction.
Richard – yes there is value in some of them.
I don’t think that’s contrdictory
Also, there is a certain arrogance in making the claim on behalf of religious believers that the truth claims are not central – the vast majority of real religious believers (rather than the annoying ones you read online or in newspapers attacking atheists for being too literal) are quite adamant that it really is the facts of the matter that interest them – Jesus died for their sins and all that is not figurative!
“real religious believers . . . are quite adamant that it really is the facts of the matter that interest them” – yes, the only one I’ve read much of, CS Lewis, has a lot of hard things to say about those who want religion adhered to because it is comforting or aesthetically pleasing or a civilising influence rather than simply true. Also, he is down on sophisticated (ie Church of England agnostic) believers who have one truth for themselves and another for their less sophisticated parishioners.
“Formal schooling in philosophy tends to teach you to listen for just one thing: logical consistency. That is as wrong-headed as learning to listen only to the melody of a piece of music and to ignore harmony, rhythm, timbre, phrasing and the rest.”
And I know that an analogy doesn’t prove anything but yes, when you listen to a piece of music you will listen to more than the melody, but it is the melody that you’ll find yourself humming or whistling the next day – the old grey whistle test. Well, the old grey whistle test of something like what is supposed to be an historical event (like Jesus Christ being incarnation of the creator of the Universe) is whether it is true or not.
I just get hung up on comments like “spiritual tone-deafness.” What does that even mean?
When I see a phrase like that coming from an atheist, I just recoil. Its like a big red warning flag: “Here be bullshitting!”