New Atheist Breaks Away from New Atheism

Over at his blog, Eric MacDonald, who used to be a New Atheist, explains why he is leaving New Atheism. He has come to recognize some of the things many of us have long been warning about.

Science Suggests Some Atheists Have Some Level of God Belief

Sometimes the rhetoric of the New Atheists can be so dogmatic, so smug, and so vitriolic that I am reminded of the line from Shakespeare, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” It’s almost as if some part of the Gnu atheist’s brain does indeed believe or suspect God exists, but others parts of the brain are working overtime trying to shut it down by shouting it down. Well, it turns out there is some scientific evidence to support this possibility.

In an article entitled, “Do atheists secretly believe in God?” on salon.com, Tom Jacobs summarizes a scientific paper that appeared in the peer-reviewed literature by noting, “The heads and hearts of atheists may not be on precisely the same page. That’s the implication of recently published research from Finland, which finds avowed non-believers become emotionally aroused when daring God to do terrible things.”

When Even the Anecdotes Fail

We have seen that Sam Harris abandons scientific reasoning to closed-mindedly dismiss the possibility his mind is closed. When psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote, “But the benefits of disconfirmation depend on social relationships. We engage with friends and colleagues, but we reject any critique from our enemies,” Harris sought to refute this by raising two examples that were supposed to demonstrate the science of psychology does not apply to him. But let’s take a closer look at those two examples.

Harris writes:

Well, then I must be a very hard case. I received a long and detailed criticism of my work from a friend, Dan Dennett, and found it totally unpersuasive. How closed must I be to the views of my enemies?

There are three relevant factors that would likely play a role in Harris’s response to Dennett’s criticism.

Friendship: Harris describes Dennett as a friend. But friends come in many varieties, ranging from Facebook “friends” to life-long companions with whom you can share your deepest secrets. So what type of friend is Dennett?

It’s difficult to say, but I would reasonably guess they are friends in the sense that that are allied culture warriors who probably converse on a private e-mail list along with other New Atheist leaders. But it doesn’t look like there is any great depth to their friendship. We can tell because of the way Sam Harris complained:

The truth is that you and I could have done a much better job—and produced something well worth reading—had we explored the topic of free will in a proper conversation. Whether we called it a “conversation” or a “debate” would have been immaterial. And, as you know, I urged you to engage me that way on multiple occasions and up to the eleventh hour. But you insisted upon writing your review. (emphasis added)

Apparently, behind the closed doors, Harris was pestering Dennett not to review his book and Dennett’s sense of friendship did not oblige him. And if Harris himself was under the impression that their friendship ran deeper than this, it’s safe to say he felt a sense of betrayal by Dennett’s review. For even Jerry Coyne noted, “It’s clear that Sam was both blindsided and hurt by Dan’s tone.”

Thus, we can see that Harris’s description of being unconvinced by a long and detailed criticism from “a friend” is overly simplistic. The dynamic likely entailed much more, such that Harris found himself unpersuaded by an ally who, at first ignored him, and then hurt and blindsided him. That is not a recipe for being receptive.

So let’s turn to the other example:

Atheists Who Believe Atheism is Knowledge

For decades we have been told that an atheist is someone who simply lacks God-belief. That is, an atheist is one who merely observes there is no evidence for God and thus belief in God is not intellectually justified. This definition has served the atheist community well by allowing them to posture as if they are objective observers and judges. As if they are a disinterested party. The way it has been set up, we theists are supposed to come before them and justify ourselves, pleading our cases with our “evidence” in hand. And if we cannot make our case to their satisfaction, then that means we are mentally ill, infected with brain viruses, and a danger to society.

Over the years, I have shown that this set-up is rigged and intellectually dishonest. There are no objective observers and judges. And what is supposed to count as “evidence” is a matter of opinion. Those who demand evidence are usually closed-minded people who insist we appear in their kangaroo courts (this why the issue of whether or not atheists are closed-minded is of central importance).

We now have new evidence that the whole definition of atheism has been rigged. For it would seem there are many atheists who do not really view atheism as a mere lack of God belief because of a lack of evidence. They instead insist there is no God. They don’t just lack God belief, they think they know God does not exist. They think they have knowledge; they think atheism is knowledge.

We’ve just seen this posturing from Louise Antony, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Well, it turns out that Antony’s “I know there is no God (!)” posture led to outbursts of cheering among the New Atheists.

Sam Harris in Retreat

If you read the two articles by Stenger and Pigliucci, it looks like Sam Harris is quietly trying to furiously backpedal. Stenger writes:

Pigliucci severely misrepresents the views expressed by Harris in his 2010 book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2012), presenting them as examples of the New Atheism’s scientism….. Nowhere does Harris’s book claim that moral questions should be settled exclusively by science. Rather he argues that science should be allowed a place at the table, where it has been previously excluded. In an email message to me, Harris explained (2014):

The Moral Landscape wasn’t a claim that current science, narrowly defined, can answer all our moral questions. It was an argument against moral relativism—the idea that questions of right and wrong have no answers, or that such answers are merely made up, culturally constructed, etc. More generally, the new atheists are not arguing that science covers all of human knowledge. We are saying that in every domain of knowledge there is an important distinction between having good reasons for what one believes and having bad ones. Religion consistently falls on the wrong side of that divide. In fact, it even has a doctrine that appears to justify staying on the wrong side (faith).

Pigliucci’s reply is below the fold. Word of warning – the tag-team of Stenger/Harris gets body slammed, so Gnu atheists might want to look away.

That was peer-reviewed?

Jerry Coyne announces:

Physicist and heathen Victor Stenger has written a peer-reviewed article for Science, Religion, and Culture, which is now accepted and available free online. It’s called “In defense of New Atheism: A response to Massimo Pigliucci.”

I have just read the article and find it hard to believe it was “peer-reviewed.”  If it was, I think it speaks to the declining standards of academic journals.  I’ll give that article some true “peer review” in the next couple of days.

Then again, Pigliucci takes Stenger to the woodshed in the same issue.   So perhaps SRC agreed to publish Stenger’s rant so the academic community could see for themselves how poorly the New Atheists reason.

New Atheist Rants Against Religion as a Dragon

Over at Quora, someone has recently submitted my essay, “New Atheism as an Embarrassment to Atheists” and asked, “Does The New Atheist movement embarass some atheists?”

So far, one atheist has replied. Let’s have a look:

Louise Antony: A Case Study of Doxastic Closure

Louise Antony is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the editor of the essay collection “Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life.” She was recently interviewed by Gary Gutting for the NYT web page.

Antony is an atheist who asserts: “I claim to know that God doesn’t exist.”

Wow. She knows. She knows? So how does she know God doesn’t exist? She tells us:

So the question is, why do I say that theism is false, rather than just unproven? Because the question has been settled to my satisfaction. I say “there is no God” with the same confidence I say “there are no ghosts” or “there is no magic.”

So she knows that God does not exist because she has confidence. Because, in her mind, the question is settled. To her satisfaction. That’s how she knows.

What this suggests to me is that her mind is closed to the existence of God. For if you know there is no God, and you have great confidence that you are right, then you also know there can be no evidence for God. For how could there ever be evidence for something you already know does not exist?

She continues:

That’s not to say that I think everything is within the scope of human knowledge. Surely there are things not dreamt of in our philosophy, not to mention in our science

Yet she knows that God does not exist. Go figure.

– but that fact is not a reason to believe in supernatural beings.

Who claimed that fact is a reason to believe in God? This sounds like a straw man to me. That fact simply means that people who claim to know, with confidence, that God does not exist, could very well be “pretending to know what they don’t know” (to borrow from another atheist philosopher). If “surely there are things not dreamt of in our philosophy, not to mention in our science,” then how does she know there is no God?

Is Sam Harris Getting Frustrated?

It looks to me like Sam Harris is getting frustrated:

In recent years, I have spent so much time debating scientists, philosophers, and other scholars that I’ve begun to doubt whether any smart person retains the ability to change his mind. This is one of the great scandals of intellectual life: The virtues of rational discourse are everywhere espoused, and yet witnessing someone relinquish a cherished opinion in real time is about as common as seeing a supernova explode overhead. The perpetual stalemate one encounters in public debates is annoying because it is so clearly the product of motivated reasoning, self-deception, and other failures of rationality—and yet we’ve grown to expect it on every topic, no matter how intelligent and well-intentioned the participants.

It’s good to know that Harris is aware of things such as “motivated reasoning, self-deception, and other failures of rationality.” It’s just that none of it could possibly apply to him! It’s something that applies to “scientists, philosophers, and other scholars.” The great scandal of intellectual life is that these scientists, philosophers, and other scholars won’t change their minds and agree with Harris.

Reviewing the Stenger Method paper

Let me summarize Demonstrating the Non-existence of God with the Stenger Method.

First, you will note that I begin with two empirical facts:

1. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Victor Stenger, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers all misinform the public that science has shown God does not exist.

2. However, not one of these scientists has ever published a single, experimental research study that shows God does not exist.

This, by itself, should cause people to question the assertions of these five men, for they are not truly qualified to make such pronouncements and don’t know what they are talking about. This can be easily shown by asking any of them this simple question: “You say that science has shown there to be no evidence for the existence of God. Well, if God did exist, what type of data would science possibly uncover as evidence for God’s existence?” Their answers will clearly demonstrate that their entire anti-God position is built on God-of-the-Gaps reasoning.* This is their logic:

If there was a God, there must be a Gap. There is no Gap, therefore, there must be no God.

Victor Stenger himself makes this abundantly clear in the quotation I provided.