The philosopher Paul Kurtz has published a new position booklet that addresses much of what I have been arguing is missing--and so deeply troubling--about the New Atheist movement. Below is a press release from the Council for Secular Humanism.
Secular Humanism's Elder Statesman Responds to "The New Atheism"Council for Secular Humanism founder and chairman Paul Kurtz has responded to the recent cultural phenomenon known as "The New Atheism" with a position booklet titled "What Is Secular Humanism?"
"The New Atheism" is a term created by a handful of pundits and journalists to describe the recent flood of highly popular best-selling books by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and Stenger--a veritable law firm of men putting belief in God on trial. These books have placed the topic of unbelief--once considered off-limits--front and center in the popular media. A recent Financial Times/Harris Poll shows that when asked if they believed in any form of God or supreme being, 14 percent of Americans said that they are agnostics (i.e., skeptical about the existence of God, though not atheists). Only 4 percent said that they are atheists; added to this, however, are another 6 percent who said "they would prefer not to say" and 3 percent who are "unsure." These add up to 27 percent of the general population. Compare this to Roman Catholics, who at 26 percent represent the largest single belief group in the United States.
Kurtz views the recent string of books as largely responsible for sparking a renewed and enriched cultural debate. "The 'atheists with attitude,' as one writer called them, have been accused of striking a rather strident and discordant tone," said Kurtz. "But for the secular humanist, it is not so much the stridency of these books that is at issue, as it is what's missing from these books." Are there any ethical values and principles that nonreligious individuals can live by? In a time when many have forsaken otherworldly religions, what does human life mean? What is its significance? Kurtz maintains that secular humanism answers these questions in a way that resonates with human aspirations and the findings of science.
The new booklet provides a succinct and engaging overview of the secular-humanist perspective. Kurtz describes the many ways in which secular humanism's scientific, philosophical, and ethical outlook has exerted a profound influence on civilization from the ancient world to the present. Today, many schools of thought broadly identify with humanist ideas and values. But Kurtz suggests that secular humanism is especially relevant to the needs of our increasingly secular world, because it rejects supernatural explanations of reality and seeks to optimize the fullness of human life in a naturalistic universe. In tune with the most progressive trends of the contemporary world, secular humanism expresses confidence in the power of human beings to solve their problems and conquer uncharted frontiers.
In a recent editorial, published in Free Inquiry magazine (August/September 2007), Kurtz writes that "Secular humanists represent a significant portion of the American public. They comprise tens of millions of people who, though nonreligious, are morally committed. The term nonreligious can be used broadly to refer to those who do not belong to or identify with a denomination or do not claim to believe in God--they may be agnostics, atheists, or skeptics. They look to modern science, literature, philosophy, ethics, and the arts for inspiration rather than the traditional religious 'sacred texts.' They are truly modern in their outlook and behavior."
Kurtz maintains that secular humanism is a bold paradigm, weaving together many historical threads while adding much more that is relevant to our rapidly emerging planetary civilization. In light of the sudden and pervasive interest in the topic of atheism and unbelief, the Center for Inquiry hopes that Kurtz's new position booklet will bring some much-needed clarification and intelligence to the continuing national discussion surrounding the intersection of religion, science, and unbelief. The booklet was published for the Center for Inquiry by its sister organization, Prometheus Books.
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I think Orr had something similar to say about Pinker's morality in The Blank Slate--secular humanism and the long secular enlightenment tradition--exists as a sort of unacknowledged background to his continual reassurances that scientism need have no impact on our middle-class morality.
There seems to be a general unwillingness to talk about the basic questions asked a long time ago by existentialist writers like Dostoevsky, because they don't much like the kinds of answer you get.
Not to say we've all got to become Russian Orthodox, but Pinker, Dawkins, et al. don't seem to like that fact that secular humanist morality more or less comes out of a leap of faith. In humanity, rather than in God.
Why don't the New Atheists whine on about existence and the meaning of life? Perhaps it's because they got it out of their systems when they were undergraduates.
Mind is a byproduct of meat. Meat uses mind to make meaning, which it assembles into a world view, so it can make more meat. Somewhere along the line there was a feedback loop, and now we have Mozart and the Clash, which is nice for us.
It would really help if people could just get over this.
Megadittos to Jon Eccles sentiments, right down to the musical references.
And while Paul Kurtz and THE TRANSENDENTAL TEMPTATION were highly influential on the angry young man I was in decades past, his writings do not wear well once the novelty of a godless view wears off. They do not inspire, and the fact is the secular humanist movement under Kurtz has not exactly been a raging success. If you are looking for guidance on a succesful movement, it makes little sense to take advice from failures of the past.
Besides, the claim that the New Atheists writings lack "ethical values and principles that nonreligious individuals can live by" is garbage, as even the most cursory glance at their writings reveals. I've found Dawkins anecdotes especially inspirational, such as his descriptions of his experiences with atheistic funerals. There he notes that the speeches were personal, rather than Biblical, read by friends and family, rather than by a person who often didn't know the deceased or attendees at all. Stories like these surpass anything Kurtz and the old guard of secular humanism have managed, which is part of the reason Dawkins is so much more well read.
If you don't find the writings of the New Atheists inspirational, I don't know what would inspire you. I suppose you don't like Mozart or the Clash either.
SA: You seem to be saying that ethics and inspiration are the same thing or in some way dependent on each other.
Cheers, SA.
It's not necessary to take our word for the inspirational qualities of the New Atheism. Just look at the discussions on the Internet. The old, softly-softly approach would never have generated this level of activity.
All political movements have their firebrands, and the moderates always argue that they lose support for the mainstream. Well, this time we are the mainstream.
Jon, evangelicals have lots of discussions on the internets too. I don't think that's meaningful measure of anything.
As an old atheist I don't see what value New Atheism is bringing to the table. Kurtz asks "Are there any ethical values and principles that nonreligious individuals can live by?" Secular humanism has a positive response to that question. New Atheism see to be merely a loud gripe-group.
Trinifar:
And yet so many of the discussions we have focus on exactly that question.
If you visit Richard Dawkins' website, you'll find hundreds of people arguing stuff out. Conservatives and liberals take opposite positions on a secular view of issues like Iraq or the position of Muslims in the west, people with and without scientific backgrounds contribute to discussions of evolutionary psychology, and so on.
In fact, I've just had a piece come up on my RSS while I've been typing this. It's an article by Lawrence Krauss, encouraging people to vote for a scientifically literate presidential candidate, if you can find one. He isn't even particularly enthusiastic about New Atheism, but we'll debate the subject anyway.
As you say, none of this is quantised data, but neither is anything in the article. If you wanted some loose measure of the success of the new movement in initiating a debate, you could compare the volume of comments on articles Matthew Nisbet writes on this subject with the volume on other articles, and what percentage of those posts could be said to have an ethical dimension.
You may not agree with the views expressed, of course, but to say they're not addressing the subject is just flat out incorrect.
I think there's a disconnect here; the "New Atheism" isn't really about religion as belief, but about religion as a political and social factor. I really don't care what kind of stuff people believe; I do care when these people want to remake the world - the world I and my family shares with them - according to their delusional fantasies. And that's the sphere where I say that religion is a net negative and something that needs to be fought.
The whole "where do morals and ethics come from" thing is just a red herring; a pointless sideshow. Atheists and agnostics are statistically no more likely to break laws or social mores (explicit or implicit) than religious people (and in fact less likely to break moral rules than the most religious people). Lack of religion doesn't lead to a lack of morals.
@Janne
Atheists and agnostics are statistically no more likely to break laws or social mores (explicit or implicit) than religious people (and in fact less likely to break moral rules than the most religious people). Lack of religion doesn't lead to a lack of morals.
I know this is a favourite argument on your side of the debate, but it's a strawman. No one starts from a blank slate. Religion and secular philosophy have been around for several millenia and cross-pollinating each other. "Lack of religion" is a non-issue. It doesn't exist. Even the most strident atheist HAS been influenced in his live by religion -and if it is, among other factors by rousing an antipathy against it. Religion IS a factor that shapes moral values even of those who don't adhere to one.
A few months ago I saw Dawkins being interviewed on a local TV station and at one point the interviewer questioned Dawkins' apparent rejection of the 10 Commandments (visa vi rejecting Biblical authority) and substituting a possible inferior list in the God Delusion. Dawkins responded by saying that he simply Googled an example of such a list of Human morals or "do's and don'ts" as one of many possible even more complete lists that Humans are capable of without recourse to believing that these lists and preferred behaviours, must emanate from a supernatural entity (paraphrasing, of course).
Here we go again. The reason that atheism doesn't have an ethics/morality rulebook for everyone to follow is that atheism is not about ethics! How long will it take for people to understand this. Just look at the word - atheism. Lack of belief in god(s).
Once you've dispensed with your supernatural beliefs then you sail your own course, there are a lot of options out there. As long as you don't replace theistic thinking with something equally dogmatic and irrational like Stalinism then I'm fine with it. Don't expect the answers from atheism, that's not its job. It's just the stepping stone to start asking the right questions
And Oliver:
Even the most strident atheist HAS been influenced in his live by religion
Those are some mighty strange points you're making. Let's see, we live in a world where rape is present so everyone has been influenced by rapists? Is that what you're getting at? I've never been religious and my moral values have in no way been shaped by any religious influence whatsoever. They come from reason, pure and simple, and would been so in a world where religion had never existed.
The key point of New Atheism is the unapologetic assertion that "there are no gods". This assertion leads directly to the conclusion that any moral or ethical codes which derive only from the authority of holy books or religious leaders have no good standing.
It is then up to god-free folk to derive their moral and ethical codes in an appropriate way, one option being secular humanism. Or to just take a god-free version of the Sermon on the Mount as a guideline!
But the non-existence of gods is separable from moral and ethical questions. It just as irrevelant to attack New Atheists (wanting to remove religious drivel from the world) for not advocating an alternative moral code as it would be to attack them for not advocating diet plans or commenting on doping in the Tour de France.
I never read the recent 'new atheist' books as some sort of alternative prescriptive dogma for living ones life morally but rather thought that they tried to answer one particular question - is there any evidence to suggest that any currently popular religion is correct.
An analogy might be a series of books critiquing communistic government structures. The fact that communism doesn't work (at least it doesn't work efficiently in the absence of much state oppression) can be made from many different political perspectives (social democrat, conservative, fascist etc) none of which need to be advocated for the point that communism fails to be valid.
I do think there is much unsaid in the current debate but we have to start somewhere and in the current context slaying the ghosts of the past is a pretty good place to begin.
Paul A writes: I've never been religious and my moral values have in no way been shaped by any religious influence whatsoever. They come from reason, pure and simple, and would been so in a world where religion had never existed.
Are you being facetious, or do actually believe that? How does one go about proving a counterfactual like that? You actually have complete knowledge of all the influences on your values?
Ummm. So you've given up thinking seriously about culture because that's too adolescent and instead you have adopted an incurious, complaisant quasi-Nietzscheanism that cries out "college undergraduate."
Interesting.
"Besides, the claim that the New Atheists writings lack 'ethical values and principles that nonreligious individuals can live by' is garbage, as even the most cursory glance at their writings reveals."
Absolutely. I find it exceedingly difficult to recognize "The God Delusion" in the criticisms I see on this site. TGD is replete with examples of both morality and inspiration that are not based on belief in the supernatural.
Oliver: As Dawkins points out, basic non-religiously-inspired morality is what you use to decide which literal religious dictates to follow, and which not to. What keeps us all from agreeing with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson that New Orleans deserved Katrina because of tolerance for homosexuality? Certainly the Bible and other religious books speak to moral principles, but we all pick and choose from these to some extent. How do we do that, if not from a more fundamental, innate sense of right and wrong?
MartinC writes: I never read the recent 'new atheist' books as some sort of alternative prescriptive dogma for living ones life morally but rather thought that they tried to answer one particular question - is there any evidence to suggest that any currently popular religion is correct.
The answer to that question seems clearly "no", there is no such evidence. Many religious people agree that the answer is "no". But I don't agree that the New Atheist books are exclusively about answering that question. Hitchens' book "God is Not Great" is addressed to the question of whether religion has played a positive or negative role in world history. Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" is similarly talking about the pernicious effects of religion, rather than arguing about evidence of the truth of religion. Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" is about the question of how religious beliefs arise.
Paul A: The idea that your morality developed purely from reason is laughably naive. History, anthropology, sociology, psychology--I could list many more fields of study here--are all about how we are influenced--crucially so--by the people, culture and social structures around us. If you are immune from all these influences, I salute you. You are unique in the annals of history.
If atheists advocate non-belief, then they have to concern themselves with the things that belief is and does. If one of the things that belief has to do with is morality and ethics, then atheism ought to address these issues. If it doesn't, then something's missing.
You are like someone who builds a huge pub with no restrooms, and when someone points out the problem you say "I am in the pub-building business. I build beer dispensaries. Restrooms have nothing to do with me."
As an old atheist I don't see what value New Atheism is bringing to the table. Kurtz asks "Are there any ethical values and principles that nonreligious individuals can live by?" Secular humanism has a positive response to that question.
Both theism and atheism are so large and heteregenous that they there is no set-wide ethical system that the members of either set can be said to adhere to. Secular humanism is a subset of atheism, not an alternative to it, and is a small enough set that it may be meaningful to discuss ethics in it.
Imagine if someone was asking how we can bring electricity and artificial light to places in the third world that have so far not had them. The new atheist says "Why don't they flip the switch on the wall? I and all of my friends get perfectly good light when I do that. In fact, I believe millions of people get light in this manner, without all this fussing about."
Just a few points of order here: I don't think the question is one of personal morality. With billions of people in the world, we might expect to see people behaving in all sorts of ways, based on their beliefs in Gods, their beliefs in lucky numbers, their beliefs in the dignity of man, whatever.
The question is how a society reaches a general moral order. On the basis of what? What keeps our society from devolving into a vendetta-driven culture? What makes us decry cruelty to animals? What makes us root for the underdog? Why do we care about Darfur? Why do we find certain things to be morally reprehensible and collectively work to suppress those things?
What role does religion play in the development of the sort of moral order we have in our society over history? Nietzsche thought he knew: he despised it, but he thought our moral order was essentially a Christian one.
Now, if you extract the purely religious leg from the table of morality and ethics
A better analogy would be someone who demolishes buildings for a living not caring that the pub he's been paid to demolish contains restrooms that people are in the habit of using.
Third World countries often don't have electric grids, but they do have religions. Religions are endemic in human society. But they're not actually needed for anything. The idea that ethical codes have to come from religion is mere convention.
Well, that's the question really. I'm willing to entertain the notion that religion and morality have little/nothing to do with one another. But then the question moves to "The what is religion doing here?"
I find the cognitive explanations (by product of our penchant for finding intentionality) to be pretty uncompelling--this just doesn't seem to explain religion as it exists and has existed very well.
But, anyhow, I think this is where we've got some interesting questions, as far as I'm concerned.
My comment may scream "college undergraduate," although it entered my mind long before then and lingers years after, but why hasn't anyone offered the obvious: ancient people knew what type of behavior was bad, or made them feel uncomfortable, so they created religions around their already prevalent superstitions. In other words, ethics and morality came first, and religions were created to corral people into sticking with them.
As for the Kurtz paper, it's not really meant for us--the ones who get it already. It's meant for the millions of religious people who believe that abandoning their god would mean letting go of everything that binds together families, lives, morals, ethics, meaning and purpose. It's meant to show religious people that there are systems set up that contain all the elements of human need and comfort without reliance on the supernatural.
TheMQ, you state that; "... ethics and morality came first, and religions were created to corral..."
Okay, whence comes your posited ethics and morality, or what conditioned the seminal ethics and morality? How do we account for differences and similarities in ethics and morality?
Not at all an undergraduate issue or question? Indeed, it is the heart of the continual debate between materialists and idealists/ideaists.
Bear-baiting, cat-burning and bull fighting were or are favoured in rather religious societies...
I disagree with the notion that the New Atheist movement does not engage in topics like ethics and values. In fact a false distinction is drawn between secular humanism and the New Atheism. The basis of a secular foundation of ethics that Dawkins outlines draws heavily from humanism.
I argue that the only distinction is that secular humanism is merely one principle of the New Atheism. The God Delusion addresses ethics, but not only ethics.
Oran Kelley: "What keeps our society from devolving into a vendetta-driven culture? What makes us decry cruelty to animals? What makes us root for the underdog? Why do we care about Darfur? Why do we find certain things to be morally reprehensible and collectively work to suppress those things?"
People know from experience that when you throw out ethics and morality then life tends to get complicated, in a bad way. And if you don't believe that, all you have to do is try it.
Oran (first comment):"There seems to be a general unwillingness to talk about the basic questions asked a long time ago by existentialist writers like Dostoevsky, because they don't much like the kinds of answer you get."
This is very much true. There is little that's new in the "New Atheism". the first time I picked up Dawkins, I flipped straight to the index to find Nietzsche and couldn't find him. Why? Why aren't more of these New Secular Humanists really existentiallists?
"There seems to be a general unwillingness to talk about the basic questions asked a long time ago by existentialist writers like Dostoevsky, because they don't much like the kinds of answer you get."
There seems to be a general unwillingness to talk about the basic questions asked a long time ago by greek thinkers like Socrates, because they don't much like the kinds of answer you get.
Seriously though, there are many questions I don't know how to answer fully or definitively or even particularly well. To pick a few, try "why is there something rather than nothing?" or, "what could it mean for life to have a purpose?", or even "how does one know one isn't a brain in a vat?".
The point is not, "atheism has all the answers you need." The point is to undercut the religious assertion (presupposition, more like) that religion helps answer such questions. With the above three questions, for example,
- how does it help for God, rather than the laws of nature, to be eternally existent? At least we know the laws exist *now*. With God we know no such thing.
- How could a dude in the sky possibly have anything to do with making right and wrong, even if he did make you?
- Tell me with a straight face that you buy Descartes proof of God against the evil demon.
A couple of those are easy to answer.
"what could it mean for life to have a purpose?"
Nothing, it's a vacuous statement. Alternatively, it means, to the person who used the expression, whatever they meant when they used the expression.
"how does one know one isn't a brain in a vat?"
You don't. It's unprovable one way or the other.
Ah, the old purpose question.
People who ask this question are confusing the meaning of purpose with something that has been assigned by a higher power. For example, what is the purpose of the North Star? Was it put here to guide early mariners, or did they simply learn that they could use it to navigate? It had no purpose until we decided to use it for one. Human life is the same way. We have no assigned purpose from a god, nor does life have any assigned or intrinsic meaning. We do, however, create our purposes and meanings through interaction with others. The purpose of a teacher is to educate; the meaning of parenthood is to raise ethical children.
Realizing that we are responsible for creating our own purposes and meanings is a vastly richer experience than simply falling back on the bronze-age concept of God wants me to act like this.
Please dont waste the tiny sliver of life you have on Earth because you somehow think youre going to get another one. Youre not. One per customer, please, and enjoy it to the fullest; morally, ethically and completely.
Right, and that's their moral order. Just because you may not like it doesn't mean it isn't a moral order.
From experience? I'd bet very few people in the first world have any experience whatsoever of moral chaos. And bad experience with chaos has very little effect on, say, people in Iraq.
Also, the question "Why is there something rather than nothing" is pretty ill-defined. Do you mean "Why" a sin "for what purpose?" Well, whose purpose would something be serving, exactly?
Precisely what does this question mean? I can't imagine a non-silly/non-contradictory/non-already assuming the presence of something like God meaning for it.
The kinds of questions New Atheists don't ask aren't just picked at random from a list of possible questions, they are the really important and interesting questions about the topic they purport to address.
Re purpose, I myself treat the question of the meaning of life as being isomorphic to the question of the sorts of things that are constitutive of the good life. At least a plurality of religious people however *do* see purpose and meaning as deriving (exclusively, even) from conformity with the will of the creator, as expressed in a specific special book.
I was suggesting that it's perfectly kosher for the new atheists to criticize this notion, which they (and I) view as silly. This remains the case, I contend, even if Christopher Hitchens, say, does not out-do Aristotle in characterizing the nature of happiness or whatnot.
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Oram Kelley -
1. I think you're being rather disingenuous if you're implying that the religious don't often suggest that God's commands are the source of morality
2. That God is the answer to the question of 'why the universe goes through the bother of existing' is implicit or explicit in most of the religious discourse. For an example from just today, consider the Pope himself, in the course of speaking about evolution:
(http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22136550-5002700,00.html)
qoute:
"Above all it does not answer the great philosophical question 'where does everything come from?"
Nowhere does the man explain why his chosen book-of-books is better in this regard; we're simply supposed to take that claim on faith. I think Dawkins don't wanna.
****
PS - I'm quite aware, naturally, that not all religious people make such claims - for example consider sciblogs' very own Rob Knop - but many (I'd say a majority) do, and it's about time they got called out on it.
Oran Kelley: From experience? I'd bet very few people in the first world have any experience whatsoever of moral chaos. And bad experience with chaos has very little effect on, say, people in Iraq.
It doesn't have to be first hand experience. History books teach of those experiences and laws are written around them. And I don't understand the relevance of your second point.
I can't help but think that this criticism amounts to little more than hand-wringing. The "but what about the morals!" argument always sounds exactly like "but what about the children!" argument to me. Yes, what about them?
For example (this is not a "new atheist", I don't think. It's a boring old garden variety one. Still, since the arguments haven't actually changed all that much I feel justified in using it):
George Smith's The Case Against God is titled so, I imagine, because that's a good description of what it is. It's a series of arguments against the existence of god, not an exhaustive and baffling set of moral instructions. It isn't entitled The Case for Secular Morals for that same reason.
In short, the books aren't designed to tell you how to behave morally. In that sense, they are more Betty Crocker, less Ann Landers. The arguments are recipes, not lifestyle guides, etiquette codes or morality tales. As they should be, since this generally is not their stated purpose.
Oran Kelley -
I would be most appreciative, if you could email me.
I think, overall, that if one wants to discuss morality, from the standpoint of secular humanism, that's great. But to claim that there is something missing, when someone writes a book, that has very indirect links to morality because they don't address it is absurd.
Look at it from the viewpoint of math. Say that a mathematician, comes up with a good formula that is pretty widely used by engineers. Another mathematician comes along and finds a flaw in the formula, a fatal flaw that means it's quite possible that structures built, using this formula, have some chance of becoming unsafe. Should the second mathematician just not mention it, because they haven't figured out what to replace it with? What if, in the majority of situations, using the flawed formula will work out fine? If only a small percentage of structures dependent on it are going to be substandard and unsafe?
Okay, whence comes your posited ethics and morality, or what conditioned the seminal ethics and morality?
Ethics arise from your innate moral sense. This isn't a new realization, as Hume pointed out the fact that in most situations requiring a moral decision, we don't consult a list of rules or reason from a set of axioms, but new experiments with people solving moral dilemmas inside an MRI have shown that the cognitive functions are only invoked for complex moral decisions that we rarely need to make and not for most of our day to day decisions.
I think that people who criticise the New Atheism on this basis get things entirely back to front. There is a vast body of secular moral philosophy around, much of it very good. That is not what we were lacking.
What was sorely lacking was a body of intelligent, yet popular and accessible, work that goes right to the root of the problem with religion's pretensions ... by challenging its fundamental truth. For the past 30 years or so, many secular thinkers have been too complacent. Secular moral philosophers and ethicists have been prepared to work on the unargued assumption that religion is not true. But there has been very little available that openly contests religion. Even in the field of philosophy of religion, the religionists have been allowed a free hand, as sceptical philosophers have assumed the debate was all over in their favour, and have concentrated on other fields. There has been little for the general reader to replace the like of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian and similar books from past generations.
The publication of this "flood" of books that criticise religion was long overdue. Of course there also needs to be work that develops morality on a secular basis, but that was not what was lacking. There's all of Peter Singer's work for a start (not that I exactly agree with Singer's approach, but it is an example of the fact that we have plenty of accessible work that does secular moral philosophy; what we did not have were the sorts of books we've seen lately from Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray, etc.).
There is no satisfying moral philosophy spouted by atheists -- that is the problem. People want ultimates, they want some over-riding meaning, the want to feel like "I personally count for something more than a mote in the Universe."
Motes we are, scintilla:: Get used to it. Or get religion.
Exactly, and if:
-every society gravitates on its own moral order, and
-religiousness is no guarantee for the kinds of morality we would prefer to cultivate, and
-most people everywhere, religious or not, give little thought to where their moral values come from,
why, exactly, do you think the 'new atheism' is such a threat to morality?
Well, degustibus may have a point here. If some people want some kind of transcendent morality, they won't get it out of a naturalistic worldview. This means that the New Atheism may be being set an impossible task if it is supposed to satisfy those people, and that the complaints about it are unfair.
However, I think that there's probably a job needing to be done to convince people to give up on transcendent sources of morality and to ground morality in purely naturalistic facts (as Hobbes and Hume did, for example ... in their different ways). I don't believe that it's fair to expect Dawkins and Hitchens to go into this huge issue in detail in their already-lengthy books (though they actually do have a bit to say about it). Richard Carrier's underrated and much more comprehensive book on metaphysical naturalism is a good start.
Somehow the books debunking transcendent morality and then replacing it with a naturalistic morality have to get published and become best-sellers. That is going to be more difficult, because the issue is more conceptually elusive than the issue of whether God exists, and therefore may have a lot less popular appeal. Moreover, it may scare the horses even more: a purely naturalistic morality is going to diverge from Christian morality.
However, I'd like to see a popular book that does this, rather than the sort of job Peter Singer and Jonathan Glover are doing (just sort of assuming from the start that morality is secular). It would make a valuable contribution. In fact, we could do with a dozen of them.
This is a bit off-topic, but ...
Russell Blackford: "What was sorely lacking was a body of intelligent, yet popular and accessible, work that goes right to the root of the problem with religion's pretensions"
I'd say that it is still sorely lacking. Popular and accessible, yes, but the level of intelligence is uneven. There are some places in The God Delusion that are mediocre or even utter crap. I can't be quite as firm about my judgments of Sam Harris or Hitchens, except that I have yet to see them say anything that indicates that their books are worth reading. In the Beyond Belief conference, for example, Harris mangles Scott Atran's admonition to (gasp!) be scientists and take some data rather than rely on one's personal intuition, spitting out a strawman about respecting religion. I have also been underwhelmed by his justifications for his claims that moderates enable extremists. Hitchens by now should be infamous for letting in his book the anti-Semitic canard about Jews having sex through a sheet, and combined with his screw-ups on Iraq, leaves me in doubt that Hitchens' book is even reasonably solid on the facts. I see plenty of vigor, but not much evidence of rigor, nor even serious attempts by the New Atheists to try to make their cases bullet-resistant.
Back to your regularly scheduled picking apart of Paul Kurtz ...
^You're overreaching a bit, J.J.
It seems to me that you've read The God Delusion, judge some of it to be wrong, or to be thin on argument, or whatever, and therefore want to question whether it is (uniformly) intelligent. That doesn't follow. I read lots of things that I think are argumentatively weak, but I don't claim they are unintelligent ... maybe misguided or simply wrong, but those are not the same thing.
E.g., I've just reviewed Michael J. Sandel's The Case against Perfection for the Monash Bioethics Review (which I'll give a free plug). Sandel's entire argument is, in my view, deeply flawed and it's comprehensively reliant on intuitions that he should not be officially entitled to help himself to in order to support his case. However, I don't say that the book, or certain passages, or its author, shows lack of intelligence: it simply has (what consider to be) significant intellectual flaws. So do many other intelligent books.
This is not to accept any of your particular criticisms of The God Delusion, just to point out that your criticisms - even if some are justified - don't detract from this being an intelligent book. I realise that there are more philosophically rigorous defences of atheism out there, such as Michael Martin's, but they have a different role to play.
In any event, even if I conceded everything you say, at least for the sake of argument, it would only mean that we need better books of the kind that Dawkins has written. It would not mean that such books are open to criticism simply for not providing detailed discussion of meta-ethics and normative theory. That is not their job.
Russell Blackford: "In any event, even if I conceded everything you say, at least for the sake of argument, it would only mean that we need better books of the kind that Dawkins has written. It would not mean that such books are open to criticism simply for not providing detailed discussion of meta-ethics and normative theory."
Fair enough.
Russell Blackford: "I read lots of things that I think are argumentatively weak, but I don't claim they are unintelligent ... maybe misguided or simply wrong, but those are not the same thing."
I'd say that's more or less an issue of semantics. If you had chosen words other than "intelligent, yet popular and accessible," I'd have probably chosen different words myself. That said, when a work accumulates enough errors, especially when they are dumb errors like describing a quote with clear meaning as not a "miracle" of honest lucidity, or indicating that theology had remained static for eighteen centuries, I have problems with describing it as intelligent.
I would say we need better books on this matter that actually take up a scientific attitude toward religion. That actually seek to give an honest answer to the question "What good is religion?" rather that giving us atheistic chauvinism.
One of the answers to this question is that religion helps provide social solidarity around things like moral and ethical issues. What we may get as religion's influence recedes was a HUGE topic for philosophers and literary types--Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, even Henry James--in the early part of the twentieth century. Why did they think about this? Because they (rightly) saw religion as a social institution
One of the stated aims of Dawkins book is to evaluate the role of religion in society. He does an terrible job at it--he'd seemingly like to believe that religiosity is just a sort of ideological disease or an unfortunate wrong turn. This is a stupid point of view, the kind that Dawkins would laugh at and tear to pieces if someone tried to advance it against practically any other universal human trait.
Evaluating the role of religion well very much means trying to answer questions like what role religion plays in moral and ethical issues. Once one has some real answers to these sorts of questions, advocates of atheism are naturally to be asked how they intend to that those roles formerly filled by religion will be taken up.
And this *is not* a matter of coming up with rational arguments about what a moral life is and why you should follow be moral. It is about how a reasonable level of moral and ethical compliance can be upheld in a complex society over a long period of time.
If there is no God, for instance, why should soldiers sacrifice their lives for their fellow countrymen? Or, if there is no God, why should a person not commit a crime that is to their advantage if it seems the benefit of doing so outweighs the risk of getting caught? You can introduce some general moral principle at this point that ought to govern behavior in these cases, but why should anyone believe in them any more than they believe in God?
As to innate moral sense: look at the world. Look at Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq. I find little evidence of innate moral sense working at the social level. What I do see if that in places where the nation state has been imposed overtop of existing religious or ethnic rifts, we get LOADS of problems.
The arrogance that allowed the border-drawers of past centuries to blithely ignore the (largely mythological) bonds of religion and ethnicity in bequeathing the new mythology of the nation-state seems to me to be pretty strongly echoed as recent "new atheist" literature ignores the role played by contemporary religious mythology.
Luckily, atheists are powerless.
Oran Kelley: "As to innate moral sense: look at the world.Look at Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq."
We have both the tendency to be selfish and the tendency to want to help out. Looking at just Nigeria, Afghanistan, and so on is taking a very slanted view of the world.
If there is no God, for instance, why should suicide bombers sacrifice their lives for their fellow countrymen?
Fixed that for you.
If there is no God, why should chimps risk their lives on border patrol? If there is no God, why should chimps and human infants spontaneously help strangers and display empathy? Since you are apparently not arguing for God's existence as such, but his usefulness as a boogeyman to keep people in line, how do you explain these behaviours in non-God-fearing infants and chimps?
Luckily, atheists are powerless.
Luckily, you are just a concern troll for atheism.
Windy, have you ever considered thinking about something rather than just being a dogged advocate for your favored viewpoint? I mean, millions of years of evolution and probably several years of publicly subsidized education have been lavished on your mind--how about using something other than the tribal loyalty facets of it?
If we are all naturally so kind and good, I suppose we have no need for any sort of governmental authority, either?
Myself, I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that humans are empathetic in certain situations. I am contending that anyone who thinks those empathetic reactions are enough to create human happiness in a world soon to be occupied by 10 billion people or so is rather naive.
My notion is that a look at the contemporary world or at history makes it pretty obvious that our good impulses have to be reinforced through social structures and institutions that encourage social solidarity and cooperation and discourage fractiousness, tribalism, xenophobia, etc. etc.
To my mind, religion has been one of these structures. A force that has enabled states/societies to be build out of clans/tribes/interest groups that otherwise might be in bloody conflict. (I also acknowledge that religion has been used to facilitate bringing states into conflict, or to purge disparate elements from society). But anyhow, I'd say religion has played a role in enabling large-scale social actions of all kinds.
And the role of empathetic reaction you point to in these kinds of social actions is minimal, I'd guess. I really do not think that, say, a typical member of the French resistance or someone storming Normandy beach or a fireman running into a burning building is motivated primarily by that sort of empathy.
Whatever it is that motivates such actions, I am guessing it has had a long and productive realtionship with religious sentiment. And to head off the simplistic interpretation of this statement I AM NOT SAYING THAT EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER MADE SUCH A SELF-SACRIFICE WAS A PRACTITIONER OF SOME ORGANIZED RELIGION, OR EVEN THAT THEY BELIEVED IN A SUPERNATURAL ENTITY THAT WE WOULD CALL GOD.
What I am saying is that if we look and figure out what does motivate these sorts of actions, that what we will find is an ideological construct that a) is itself quasi-religious even if it does not contain a concept of a personal God; and b) has been inculcated in society through the means of religion; and c) has spread as a sort of value-in-itself beyond the bounds of religious belief itself.
...have you ever considered thinking about something rather than just being a dogged advocate for your favored viewpoint?
Look who's talking. If you were half as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't need to construct ridiculous strawmen like this:
If we are all naturally so kind and good, I suppose we have no need for any sort of governmental authority, either?
Complementary strawman: If religion makes us all so nice and moral, I suppose we have no need for any sort of secular governmental authority, then?
Some of us were simply pointing out that an innate moral sense seems not to be based on religion, not that it is enough to maintain moral behaviour in a society. Whereas you seem to be talking more about how complex societal structures are maintained, not about morality as such (or context morality or ethics rather than personal morality). It seems very simplistic to say that firemen, soldiers and the police do their jobs because of "morality". Are they more moral than garbage collectors or nurses?
What I am saying is that if we look and figure out what does motivate these sorts of actions, that what we will find is an ideological construct that a) is itself quasi-religious even if it does not contain a concept of a personal God; and b) has been inculcated in society through the means of religion; and c) has spread as a sort of value-in-itself beyond the bounds of religious belief itself.
If it has spread as a value in itself it probably does not need religion to sustain itself. Talking about the possible religious origins of values is one thing, making ominous vague warnings about the dangers of atheism is another thing.
For example, universal literacy in certain European countries was achieved early on due to the state church and compulsory bible studies. We can keep the literacy and toss the bible studies, no endless hand-wringing required.
You seem to be selectively using an extremely narrow sense of "moral" here. "Moral" seems to mean "good." I take "moral" to indicate a certain kind of decision.
Fireman is outside a burning building, it is his duty to run in and risk his life to rescue others. He does or doesn't. He does, but then quits afterwards. He does and sticks with it, perhaps eventually getting killed on a rescue. Are these moral decisions?
Is the fireman more moral (good) than the garbageman? I have no idea. The fireman may be a serial killer in his off-time. Does being a garbage man involve acute, high-stakes moral (category) decisions being made or reaffirmed on a fairly regular basis? Not to my knowledge.
Kind of like saying we can dispense with natural selection because we have spandrels and genetic drift. It may be, say, that strong secular morality is only possible under the umbrella of a pre-existing religious morality system. In other words the relationship may be structural, not just etiologic.
But anyhow, I'm not saying there necessarily is any great danger in atheism, I'm saying the advocates for atheism are surprisingly incurious about the role of the social and ideological institutions they propose to tear down, and how those roles might be filled in an atheistic future. Which is indicative to me of a pervasive intellectual unseriousness in the whole Dawkins/Harris camp.
Dawkins has already come across a lot of these issues and come up with some pretty lame debater's responses to them. Which I suspect is because he isn't a particularly good social thinker.
But this is an eminently social issue. Why he thinks he is the person to write on what good religion is or how it might have evolved (knowing and wanting to know very little about what religion is and how it works would seem to disqualify him), I don't know.
I think his writing here is closely related to his writing on memes: Dawkins is interested to explain human irrationality in a way that domesticates it for him--he wants to make it into a disease. Myself, I look at human irrationality and I see an important part of the very structure of human life, one that must be accommodated. Those accommodations might change, but they have to be thought about seriously.
The hard work here is not proving the obviously irrational to be irrational to those who do not partake of the irrationality in question. It is trying to figure out what that irrationality is doing there in the first place. It is not because the purposes of the irrationality itself are well served to be there. It is because our purposes are or have been served by it.
What those purposes are and how they are served is the question. So what is lacking in the current wave of scientific atheism? Anything that could be called science or even social science. Any serious questioning of how religion works--it isn't a system of propositional truths, not only are religious beliefs largely untrue (thanks Richard for pointing this out), but religions do not function primarily as grab-bags of false facts. That's not why they're still with us after all these years.
So my question to the new scientific atheism is not "what's missing?" It's "what's there?"