Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

Atheism:A Very Short Introduction By Julian Baggini

Chapter 1: What is Atheism • In general, Baggini associates atheism with naturalism. • Atheism is the belief that there is no God or gods. • This seems to coincide in most cases with some form of naturalism. • He draws the parallel between “Nessies” and “Anessies” to show that there is no reason to see Atheism as dependent on theism, but it also works well to explain the relationship to naturalism. • Crude physicalism asserts that the only things that exist are physical objects. • Naturalism is the belief that there is only the natural world, and not a supernatural one. • The atheist is not necessarily a denier of anything that is not physical/material. • Baggini doesn’t claim that becoming an atheist is a passport to happiness . . . that is much more challenging.

Chapter 2.The Case for Atheism • Evidence • Evidence is stronger if it is available to inspection by more people on repeated occasions; and worse if it is confined to the testimony of a small number of people on limited occasions. • By contrast, anecdotal evidence is based on the testimony of a single person, relating to one incident. • He uses the hypothetical of canine combustion to explain this use of evidence. • As Hume pointed out, we have to balance the report/evidence for canine combustion against the much larger evidence against it. • Second, humans are not good at interpreting their experiences, especially unusual ones. (e.g. spoon benders) • p. 16 His argument is that all strong evidence points to atheism; the weak evidence points to theism.

Absence and Evidence • Often theists will claim that the “absence of evidence is not the same as the evidence of absence.” Baggini critiques this view. • He uses the example of looking in the fridge to see if there is any butter there. Both before and after looking there could be an absence of evidence, the difference is that once we look and we have not found evidence where it should have been found . . . • His argument is that since atheism is a form of naturalism, there is a plethora of evidence for naturalism everywhere we look, but there is not for anything else (and not just God—genies, fairies, angels, etc.). • (Think of how naturalism explains hurricanes and terrorists attacks vs. how religious people explain them.)

Evidence for Atheism • For atheists, their naturalism insists that human beings are animals. • Our consciousness is biological. We don’t have it without a brain. • All the evidence points towards a correlation between the brain and consciousness. • The counter evidence, from mediums, ghost stories, etc., is very weak. We tend to be bewitched by the unusual. There is no real evidence • Our sex drive is part of our biology, and not something God gave us so that we would be tempted to sin.

Atheism and Dogmatism • Those who confuse atheism with dogmatism are really confusing a “firmly-held belief” with dogmatism. • To be dogmatic is to hold one’s beliefs are indefeasible when such a refusal to countenance the possibility of being wrong is not justified. • But this does not lead to agnosticism. We can still hold beliefs one way or another without insisting on their indefeasability.

Arguments to the best explanation • Induction is the main method we use. It is to argue from what has been observed in the past or the present to reach conclusions about what hasn’t been observed in the past, present, and future. Such arguments are premised on the uniformity of nature. • Atheists argue that when we apply this method consistently, we get a picture of the world as run by natural laws. • The second type of argument which is based on evidence is called abduction. This is the argument to the best explanation. This means that if there is reason to suspect more than one possible explanation you choose the best, “best” meaning simpler, more coherent, more comprehensive than the rest.

Why is the atheist view the best explanation? (Some examples) • 1. It requires us to posit only the existence of the natural world; alternatives require us to posit the existence of an unobserved world. • 2. Atheist view is more coherent because everything fits into one sphere of being. Alternative views have to explain how the supernatural world interacts with this one. (I would add that explaining how God caused the hurricane is odd, since the entire explanation for the hurricane itself is natural.) • 3. Atheism can explain divergent religious beliefs: they are human constructions. The religious view is that only one is true. • 4. The atheists offer us no reason to expect that the world will not be filled with pain and suffering, but religions have to explain how a loving God permits/requires such suffering. • 5. Consciousness. Brain activity vs. an immaterial soul • 6. Strength of sex drive. Natural product of evolution vs. something God gave us which will make us more likely to sin.

Is atheism a faith position? • Some people say atheism is a matter of faith. • But what kind of objection is that? If all you mean is that we can never know anything with final certainty, than it’s meaningless to say atheism is a matter of faith. It is a trivial fact. • To make it a non-trivial fact we have to argue that atheism requires just as much faith as theism. • But this is not the case. Religious belief is a faith-belief because it requires us to believe beyond the evidence.

Place Your Bets • He takes on Pascal’s wager. • The wager doesn’t tell us which religion to choose. • If God does exist, what does he want from us? • It seems likely that what he wants is goodness, so isn’t the most important thing to be good? • If what he wants is worship, he must be pretty insecure, and it seems odd to believe a Supreme Being would suffer from such a malady. Besides, how do I know what the proper mode of worship is? I could just be making God more and more angry by worshipping the wrong God, or worshipping God in the wrong way. • If what he wants is belief in him, and I’m doing my best with my intellect and the evidence, and still don’t believe, will God really reject me? • As for worship, doesn’t it make God seem insecure to make us worship him in order to be saved?

3. Atheist Ethics Ivan Karamazov famously said: “Without God, everything is permitted.” But this is not true. First, Baginni, shows that Plato, in the Euthyphro, showed that God can’t be the source of our morality, if so, morality is arbitrary. Everything isn’t permitted. Just look at how we run the world. Furthermore, what kind of morality depends on punishment and reward for its formation?

Morality and Choice • He looks at Kierkegaard’s treatment of the Abraham and Isaac in Fear and Trembling. • One of the insights to emerge from this, and existentialists like Sartre, is the idea that we are all choosing all the time. We can’t escape choice, but must take responsibility for it. • There are at least two choice we need to make: • 1. Is the command authentic? The problem is that no evidence or logic can settle this question convincingly. • 2. Should we follow the command?

Sources of Morality • One response is prudential reasons: I should be moral because I’ll be happier or God will reward/punish me accordingly. • But if we say we should be moral because it’s the right thing to do, we have a circular argument. • Baggini argues that such sure-fire sources of morality cannot be found. • He thinks at the very root of morality is a kind of empathy or concern for the welfare of others. Like Hume, he thinks moral reasoning (et al) ought to be a “slave of the passions.” We can only get started with it if there is some kind of altruistic impulse to begin with.

Moral Thinking. • Aristotle: Human Flourishing • He asks a lot of questions, including questions like “how many friends should one have?” that we would not normally consider ethical/moral questions. • This is because the ancient Greek way of thinking was concerned with human flourishing. • The good person is the one whose life is going well: he will be prudent, have a close circle of not too many friends, show courage, be just, spend money wisely, and be amiable and witty. • Of course, his thinking was confined to free men, and probably gave inadequate consideration to other classes of people and their flourishing, but it did lead to a list of virtues not very different from our own.

Consequences • This kind of thinking considers the consequences of certain actions. • Of course it doesn’t tell you why you should do something, but it seems to argue that pain is a bad thing (it is for me) so I should act in ways that minimize bad consequences.

Universalizability • We can all see that it is bad for us to suffer unnecessary pain; if it’s bad for us, shouldn’t it be bad for others? • To act consistently, that is, to act non-hypocritically, we would need to extend these ethics to others. • Kant said there are two kinds of imperatives: hypothetical, meaning the imperative requires a goal, and categorical, meaning something I ought to do/not to do regardless of my aims and objectives. • To Kant it was the nature of a moral rule to be a categorical imperative: to recognize that I ought not to be cheated, is to recognize that I ought not to cheat. • The major debate is does reason require us to follow certain categorical imperatives, or is universalizing much weaker in its rationale? Baggini thinks it is weaker.

4. Meaning and Purpose People assume that for atheists life has no meaning or purpose; but they fail to realize that the problem of meaning and purpose is also a problem for the religious person.

The Designer’s Purpose • Sartre’s “paper knife” example sets up the problem. We know the purpose of the paper knife, but without a creator, what is our purpose? Without a creator, we lack essence. • First, is it really helpful to think of purpose as coming from a creator? What kind of purpose would this be? Wouldn’t it be a little like a Brave New World baby lab, creating some people to be janitors? In which case, what kind of meaning is derived from that purpose? • Some will say it is not a purpose we do for God, but genuinely a purpose for us. These people tend to say that purpose is a mystery, and so how does that add meaning and value to this life here?

Purpose as goal • To be really meaningful, the purpose must somehow be our own project. • Evolution tells us our purpose is to transmit DNA, but that doesn’t help. • While some people say God put them on earth to win the 200m, their colleagues think they do it for themselves. This goal-orientation can create a kind of meaningful life but it has two risks: • First: often we simply do not achieve our goal. • Second: we achieve it and then what? • We might approach these questions with a series of “why?” questions. Why do I eat food? To live and because I like it. If you have to ask why I do things I enjoy, you don’t really get what it means to enjoy something. • This leads us to the idea that eventually we have to end up with things that are valuable in themselves and are not simply to meet some further aim or goal. If we become too goal oriented we risk missing the point. • Goals can play a very important role in our life, but they fulfill this role best if they meet two conditions: first, we must find the process of achieving them meaningful and second achieving of the goal itself must lead to something of enduring value to us.

Life as its own answer • The atheist’s desire to try and find what makes life worth living rather than hoping that the next one will be better seems sensible and prudent, especially given the evidence that this is the only life we’re going to get anyway. • This will also help us confront the reality of our finitude. • Hedonism • The problem with pleasure is that it’s transitory.

Death • Religious people tend to think that this life is only meaningful if there is another life after this one. Why? The idea is that life has to be longer, or endless, in order to have real meaning, but is that true? • It is certainly not the case that activities that are endless are necessarily more meaningful. Wouldn’t an endless soccer game be less meaningful than one that lasted only 90 minutes? • And what about the afterlife? If it is radically different from this one, in what sense can I say it recognizable to me or that it is, somehow, inherently worthwhile? If we say that it is, that some forms of existence are just inherently valuable, then why not value this form of life, the one we have right now and know about? • (Personally, he thinks living a little longer would be better, but death does add meaning to our lives.)

Meaningful Lives • Lots of smart, interesting, artistic people have led meaningful lives. • Or think of people in the Czech Republic. How do they seem?

6. Against Religion? • Atheists are necessarily anti-religious in one sense: they believe that religions are false. • Arguments for God’s Existence • The Cosmological Argument • The Teleological Argument • The Ontological Argument

What the Justifies Belief? • Plantinga: faith as “a special source of knowledge, knowledge that can’t be arrived at by way of reason alone.” • But Baggini says it is “futile for atheists to attack the religious with arguments undermining these reasons for belief if they are not genuine reasons for belief at all. • But to believes who are at least willing to question their own position: • Be careful about what we claim “cannot be doubted”—may actually mean “don’t want to doubt.” • Belief of Platinga’s kind is a risky strategy; people around the world have a similar sense of conviction, but with very different content.

Militant Atheism • While all atheists see religions as false, some atheists see them as false and harmful. • Harmful Religion • One could say that believing false things is always harmful, but this applies to religious beliefs that are demonstrably false. • Or, following Nietzsche, we could say that religion is life-denying, and therefore harmful, but not all religious belief is life-denying. • Or, we might argue that one cannot easily separate religion’s harmful effect from its more benign ones. In this sense, fundamentalism(s) need moderates in order to keep their position from being “recognized for the dangerous nonsense it is.” • (Baggini is not willing to argue that religion is necessarily harmful.)

5. Atheism in History • The birth of atheism • There are two theories: • James Thrower argues that it began in Greece. • David Berman argues that it began in the 18th century. • The impetus behind Thrower’s theory is that in ancient Greece we see an emphasis on rationality, debunking of myths, and attempt to reason apart from the gods. (Thucydides’ history is an example of this.) • Some people say that atheists are too committed to rationality, but then why not believe in the Tooth Fairy? • Berman’s theory focuses on what he calls “avowed atheism,” the first example of which seems to Baron d’Holbach’s The System of Nature (1770). • Berman’s theory connects atheism with the Enlightenment, its emphasis on reason, rejection of hierarchy, superstition, etc. • its questioning of religion, and its emphasis on equality, liberty, and tolerance. (Baginni knows there are problems with the Enlightenment, but it has been a success.)

Atheism and 20th-cnetury totalitarianism • Spanish and Italian fascism was directly aligned with the church. • Supported Franco. • The Lateran treaty gave fascist support to making the catholic church the official religion, and gave Musollini the support of the church. • For the Nazis its more complicated, but the causes of the Holocaust are certainly rooted in Christian anti-semitism, and the religious people mostly cooperated with the Nazis. Besides, the elevation of blood, nation, etc. to a sacred level is not an atheist value. • Soviet communism is different. They were an atheist state, but nothing about Stalin’s purges follows from atheist ideals, plenty of atheist reject Stalinism and communism, and if we want to reject atheism for this reason, why not reject religion because of the crusades and the Inquisition?

Atheism: A Very Short Introduction