Note to the New Atheists: What we need isn't less religion, but better theology.

In the comments section of my last post on a typical silly argument by Richard Dawkins against religious belief, Uncle Skeptic said:

Allowing for some literary license with regard to generality and geography, the Dawkins quote is right on. If we can’t, in general, “judge an individual’s justification for her beliefs by the cultural soup from which those beliefs arise”, then how do you explain the overwhelming correlation between religion and geography? If you look at the geographical distribution of religions, it’s obvious that the vast majority of religious people do, in fact, acquire their religion based on the prevailing cultural soup.

A few points here. First, you are confusing sociological questions with epistemological questions. There are simple sociological reasons why we find high levels of religious uniformity among entire cultures, nations, and races: such uniformity allows for social cohesion, national identity, and a shared set of values. That people often adopt the beliefs of those around them is not new or surprising. Suppose 99% of the people of a culture believe the same thing on a particular religious subject - say, that humans are made in the image of God - and they believe simply because that's what their parents or their culture told them. This fact has exactly zero bearing on whether people actually are made in the image of God or not. As for me, if I'm trying to determine for myself what my view on human nature is, sociological facts about how and why this belief is widely held in my culture are entirely irrelevant. What only matters is whether I have good reasons for accepting it or not, and that is an epistemological question that is independent of sociological ones. If I have a suspicion that I have been duped or "indoctrinated" either for or against this belief, I need only to investigate the matter for myself. Just because a belief is held widely in one particular culture does not automatically make it wrong.

Here is Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion:

If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam is false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.

Before we take this quote too seriously, we should consider the fact that this is the same Richard Dawkins who claimed that raising a child Catholic is worse than sexually abusing him. Credibility issues aside, what can we make of statements like the one above? This sort of reasoning is very prevalent in the writings of the new atheism of Dawkins, Harris, et al. But this is a typical Dawkinsian non-argument. There is no there there. What is the point of such statements other than to offer intellectual kudos to those who already disbelieve in any particular religion? Consider the following variation on the above quote:

If you were born in Arkansas and you think representative democracy is the best form of government and that Islamic theocracy is the worst, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.

Or how about this one:

If you were born in 1980 and you think the world is round instead of flat, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in 1089, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination.

If you can understand the silliness of the two latter statements, you should be able to understand the silliness of the first. You don't necessarily judge an individual's justification for her beliefs by the cultural soup from which those beliefs arise. Consider the following three facts:

(1) I live in a culture where a majority of the people believe Christianity is true.
(2) My parents taught me to believe that Christianity is true.
(3) I believe that Christianity is true.

And these:

(4) Aziz lives in a culture where a majority of the people believe that Islam is true.
(5) Aziz' parents taught him to believe that Islam is true.
(6) Aziz believes that Islam is true.

Now, it's obvious that facts (1)-(3) have no bearing on whether Christianity is true or not, just as (4)-(6) have no bearing on whether Islam is true or not. Let's add one more fact to our list:

(7) If I had been born in Aziz' family, I would have believed that Islam was true instead of Christianity.

Dawkins' contention is that if I am aware that facts (1)-(7) are true, then I should conclude that I am a victim of "childhood indoctrination."

But why? The circumstances under which I form a belief are different animals from the reasons I have for holding that belief. I suppose that by Dawkins using this sort of reasoning he means to hold up a simple truism: we shouldn't believe something just because it is widely believed in our own culture. This is obvious, but trivial. Dawkins is attempting to twist this simple truism into some sort of cudgel against religious belief. But just because it is true that some religious people hold their beliefs because they were raised in a religious culture, and because they themselves have not done enough reflection to have good reasons for their beliefs, does not mean that all of them do. And just because some parents indoctrinate and propagandize their children into religious belief does not mean that all of them do. I think most religious parents attempt, to the best of their ability, to give their children good reasons for why they think their religious views are right and others are wrong. That some parents fail miserably at this task is probably a contributor to the apostasy rate of children of religious believers, but that too is a different discussion altogether.

Consider again my above variations on Dawkins' statement. Suppose someone were to use my first hypothetical statement to mock Dawkins for believing that representative democracy is superior to Islamic theocracy. What would his response be? I think he would simply point out that representative democracy is the best form of government for Reason A, Reason B, Reason C, and so forth. If he is justified in doing this, why is the religious believer not justified in doing the same thing? Facts about what someone would believe in a possible world in which they were raised in a different culture are irrelevant to the justification for the beliefs they hold in this, the real world. If we were to adopt this sort of skepticism, then it wouldn't just be religious beliefs that we would have to be skeptical about, but our moral beliefs, our political beliefs, and any other beliefs that fall short of being justified by naked logic or direct experience. Once again, for all his blustering and cuteness, the darling of the new atheists poses no convincing argument against the justification of religious belief. Dawkins always disappoints.

My posts on Richard Dawkins' 'Ultimate Boeing 747 Argument' against the existence of God are finished. Below you will find links to all the posts in this series as well as a few others that deal with Dawkins' claims. Or you could always just peruse the Contra Dawkins sub-category. I now wash my hands of the man.

Theism Defeated? A Response to Richard Dawkins' 'Ultimate 747 Argument' Against the Existence of God

• Formulating the Argument


• Formulating the Argument (part 2)


• Counterargument 1


• Counterargument 2


• Counterargument 3

Special Dawkins Bonus Posts!

• Richard Dawkins' non-argument against arguments from religious experience


• Tech savvy atheists and head-in-the-sand theists


• Dawkins jumps the shark


• Richard Dawkins = Cosmo Kramer

[This is the final part of my series critiquing Richard Dawkins' 'Ultimate 747 Argument' against the existence of God. Previous entries can be found here, here, here, and here.]

Counterargument 3: A Complex God Can Exist Necessarily

To see how this final counterargument runs, recall some of the premises of the various formulations of the 747 argument I outlined in previous posts. The first three premises of 747m are:

(i) All entities (potential or actual) possess organized complexity (C) in degrees.

(ii) For any degree of C possessed by any entity E, however, E’s possessing C entails E’s possessing improbability of existence (I) in a degree that is proportional to the degree of C possessed by E.

(iii) For any degree of I possessed by E, however, E’s possessing I entails E’s possessing a level of explanatory requirement (R) in a degree that is proportional to the degree of I possessed by E.

The move from (i) to (ii) and from (ii) to (iii) is questionable. It seems that Dawkins’ boldness allows him to muster the confidence to posit necessary connections between organized complexity, improbability, and explanatory requirement in a striking way. Is this move legitimate? It's hard to see how it is. Discussion of metaphysical issues of this sort is almost impossible without referring to the concepts of necessity and contingency. Thus Dawkins’ argument is incomplete; it doesn’t deal with issues it needs to deal with if it wants to arrive at its conclusion in a convincing manner. Traditionally theists have viewed God as a necessary being. Every created thing, however, is contingent. This just means that of quarks and Quakers, pandas and people, and molecules and mollusks, none of them have the power to exist on their own. God, however, being a necessary Being, does have the power to exist on His own. In fact, He’s the ground of all being Himself (“I AM”), and nothing can exist apart from His necessity. If God were to disappear, everything else would disappear as well.

From my beach reading, Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise:

2069 June 08 GMT 1537. Message 6943. Sequence 2. Starglider to Earth.

The hypothesis you refer to as God, thought not disprovable by logic alone, is unnecessary for the following reason.

If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of organization than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress. William of Ockham pointed out as recently as your fourteenth century that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. I cannot therefore understand why this debate continues.

The speaker here is "Starglider," a robotic alien probe that passes through our galaxy on an information-gathering mission. Clarke means Starglider to be an immensely intelligent entity, a sentient logical computer with the accumulated knowledge of a thousand intelligent species at its disposal. As much as I admire Clarke and enjoy his writings, I find it difficult that a super-intelligent being would propound such a sophomoric argument for the non-existence of God (and I assume that Clarke means Starglider to be speaking for himself here). Starglider's statement first jumped out at me because of its conspicuous similarities with Dawkins' 747 argument, against which I have been voluminously blogging lately. Indeed, the argument is downright Dawkinsian in its cheeky assumptions about its own cogency, as if it decisively ends the debate.

[In previous posts I introduced Richard Dawkins' "Ultimate 747 Argument" against the existence of God. Dawkins has recently made this argument the centerpiece of his book, The God Delusion. In my first post I pointed out that the argument suffers from a debilitating lack of clarity. In the second post I attempted to construct the argument formally so that we would have an easier time of dealing with it. In my last post I presented my first counterargument. Now I present my second. All page references are from Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006). One quote is from Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1996).]

Counterargument 2: God is Not Necessarily Complex

Recall that on Dawkins’ system of probability, an entity’s improbability of existence is directly proportional to the level of complexity that entity possesses. The first three steps of 747m are:

(i) All entities (potential or actual) possess organized complexity (C) in degrees.

(ii) For any degree of C possessed by any entity E, however, E’s possessing C entails E’s possessing improbability of existence (I) in a degree that is proportional to the degree of C possessed by E.

(iii) For any degree of I possessed by E, however, E’s possessing I entails E’s possessing a level of explanatory requirement (R) in a degree that is proportional to the degree of I possessed by E.

All this means is that, for example, my 1996 Nissan Pathfinder is more complex, and therefore more improbable, and therefore requires more explanation for its existence, than a three pound rock. For this second counterargument, however, we are going to focus on premise (vi) from 747m:

(vi) For any entity E1 that brings about the existence of entity E2, the degree of C possessed by E1 must necessarily be greater than the degree of C possessed by E2.

And (xv) from 747e:

(xv) However, if God created biological life then He would necessarily be more complex than even the most complex example of biological life.

Also, 747s can’t succeed without accepting either (vi) or (xv) as an implicit assumption, so it seems that this premise is crucial to the overall success of every version of the 747 argument.

[In previous posts I introduced Richard Dawkins' "Ultimate 747 Argument" against the existence of God. Dawkins has recently made this argument the centerpiece of his book, The God Delusion. In my first post I pointed out that the argument suffers from a debilitating lack of clarity. In the second post I attempted to construct the argument formally so that we would have an easier time of dealing with it. In this post I present my first counterargument to Dawkins' claims.]

Counterargument 1: The 747 Argument Fails to Show that Theistic Belief is Irrational

First, Dawkins understands his argument to be a very powerful ontological or metaphysical argument, outlined in the last post as 747m. The problem here is that even in this version Dawkins is mixing his metaphysics with his epistemology in an unacceptable way. Consider premise (iii). Recall that (iii) was:

(iii) For any degree of I possessed by E, however, E’s possessing I entails E’s possessing a level of explanatory requirement (R) in a degree that is proportional to the degree of I possessed by E.

Furthermore, according to premise (iv) the degree of R possessed by E is directly proportional to the degree of I possessed by E. But (iii) contains a subtle and not entirely legitimate assumption. To understand this, consider the following two propositions:

(HI) It is highly improbable that God exists.

(HR) It is highly irrational to believe that God exists.

The conclusion of Dawkins’ argument (or at least to 747m and 747s) is (HI). But (HI) is a metaphysical claim, while (HR) is an epistemological claim. It is clear that Dawkins thinks that (HI) somehow entails or at least implies (HR).

[Note: In a previous post I introduced Richard Dawkins' "Ultimate 747 Argument" against the existence of God. Dawkins has recently made this argument the centerpiece of his book, The God Delusion, but in my previous post I pointed out that the argument suffers from a debilitating lack of clarity. In this second post I attempt to construct the argument formally so that we will have an easier time of dealing with it. In order to ensure that I treat Dawkins' argument fairly I have formulated three different versions of his argument. In future posts I will show how theists can respond.]

The Metaphysical Version of the 747 Argument

Dawkins’ explicit claim is that the 747 Argument is aimed at (G), the proposition that such a being as God actually exists. If so, then the argument is essentially about metaphysics. It purports to show the extremely high improbability that a certain type of being actually exists. If we assume that his argument is against (G), and that his comments referring to certain theistic design arguments are only incidental to this primary aim, then we have an argument that looks like the following:

[Note: All page references are from Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006).]

In his recent book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins claims that he has formulated an argument against the existence of God that decisively trumps all challengers. Dawkins, the Oxford biologist and plucky standard-bearer for militant anti-theism, is supremely confident that his ‘Ultimate 747 Argument’ against the existence of God is not only successful in its aim of debunking theism, but that it is practically immune to any argument that can be brought against it. Indeed, Dawkins thinks the argument is more convincing than even the argument from evil, and that, “this argument … demonstrates that God, while not technically disprovable, is very very improbable indeed.” (109) Thus Dawkins takes his argument to be a particularly compelling inductive argument, one that shows the extreme improbability of God. In his view, this argument

is indeed a very strong and, I suspect, unanswerable argument … The argument from improbability, properly deployed, comes close to proving that God does not exist. My name for the statistical demonstration that God almost certainly does not exist is the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit. (113)

The conclusion of this argument, “is close to being terminally fatal to the God Hypothesis.” (61) In this series of posts based on a recent paper I wrote, I want to show that Dawkins' confidence in this argument is wildly misplaced, and that the theist's only trouble in answering it will be in determining which of the several available options will do the best job.

As much as I dislike the idea, it's time to start blogging on Richard Dawkins and his anti-theisic crusade. I'm currently putting the final touches on a paper critiquing Dawkins' "Ultimate 747 Argument" against God's existence that he so loudly trumpets in The God Delusion. When I finish it I'll put it on the still under-represented Writings section. Until then I thought I'd start posting summaries of ideas I formulate in the paper.

Today our topic is Dawkins' treatment of arguments from religious experience as they are used to (1) justify belief in God or (2) "prove" God's existence. I'm not sure Dawkins understands the difference between these two purposes, but I'll set that aside for now. Dawkins thinks he can do away with arguments from religious experience in a mere six pages (if you find this hubristic, consider that he spends even fewer pages on Aquinas' five ways). However, even in these six pages there isn't much of an argument. Dawkins' contention is that the human brain has very sophisticated "simulation software," and that somehow spiritual experiences are manufactured by this fine piece of biological engineering. Here is a characteristic bit of Dawkinsian wisecrackery on the subject:

You say you have experienced God directly? Well, some people have experienced a pink elephant, but that probably doesn’t impress you. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, distinctly heard the voice of Jesus telling him to kill women, and he was locked up for life. George W. Bush says that God told him to invade Iraq (a pity God didn’t vouchsafe him a revelation that there were no weapons of mass destruction). Individuals in asylums think they are Napoleon or Charlie Chaplin, or that the entire world is conspiring against them, or that they can broadcast their thoughts into other people’s heads. We humour them but don’t take their internally revealed beliefs seriously, mostly because not many people share them. Religious experiences are different only in that the people who claim them are numerous.

My friend Aaron Hernandez, who has degrees in both biology and philosophy, recently took offense with me for something I said in this post:

Biologists do not often make good philosophers, and vice versa.

Alright Aaron, I grant the point. This statement doesn't seem fair. There is nothing in the intellectual makeup of biologists qua biologists that prevents them from being good philosophers. Indeed, intellectuals cross over disciplines quite often and have valuable things to say. So perhaps I should qualify my statement a bit, and say rather that a professional biologist, untrained in philosophy, is not as likely to make as good of an argument on any philosophical subject as a trained philosopher is. Likewise, a professional philosopher, untrained in biology, is even less likely to do biology successfully than a trained biologist.

The context of this statement was Richard Dawkins' critique of theism in his book The God Delusion. Dawkins fancies his arguments against belief in God as being devastating to theism and unanswerable by theism's proponents. But Dawkins, as I hope to show in a paper I'm writing, fails at this Herculean task he has set out for himself. His infamous '747 Argument' against God's existence is interesting, but lacks the logical potency that he thinks it has. The theist has multiple avenues of response, and I think most of us are justified in passing right over it as not being especially compelling.

So, again Aaron, I apologize for the statement. I needed to clarify what I meant, that it was the likes of Dawkins and P. Z. Myers that I was criticizing, not biologists who actually know something about philosophy.

You can hear one "Dr. Terry Tommyrot" discussing his new book The Dawkins Delusion here. Dr. Tommyrot is not convinced of the existence of Richard Dawkins. He also believes that Dawkinsianism and its radical followers are forces for great evil in the world.

Here is a transcript and here is the original, but you really should hear the fascinating interview.

[HT to Uncommon Descent]

Here is the always witty Alvin Plantinga's review of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. It's long, but I'll quote the best bit:

Now despite the fact that this book is mainly philosophy, Dawkins is not a philosopher (he’s a biologist). Even taking this into account, however, much of the philosophy he purveys is at best jejune. You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside) many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class.

I've been beating a similar drum for quite some time now. If - like the Dawkinses and Harrises of the world - you are going to continually holler and stamp your feet about the irrationality and danger of theism, you better have some pretty potent arguments to back up your claim. But alas, their arguments are batting solid .200s in the Little Leagues of serious philosophy. I suppose we should expect this. Biologists do not often make good philosophers, and vice versa. If I were to make a monolithic argument about biology it would probably be pretty febrile. But, unlike Dawkins, I understand my own academic limitations.

[HT to John DePoe]

Digg and YouTube Powering Atheism 2.0 discusses how the new militant atheism is using information sharing sites to further its agenda. I'm not sure how much cultural influence these sites are having, but I've certainly noticed an abundance of Dawkins and Harris promotion on sites like YouTube over the last few months. I find this disturbing, and not simply because it's atheism, but because of the type of atheism it is.

Well, what type of atheism is it? It's hard to define, and I haven't quite come up with a nifty catch-all name for it, but I explain it this way: the militant atheism of Dawkins and Harris makes claims against theism that far outpace the quality of its actual arguments against theism. In other words, they and the legions of internet trolls who promote them loudly and vehemently proclaim that all religion is irrational, dangerous, superstitious, etc., and then as evidence of this they produce arguments that professional philosophers do not find to be as devastating as their defenders make them out to be.

This is not surprising. By academic trade I am a philosophy student, and thus I am aware that any major argument I make in an area outside of my own discipline is likely to be specious, if not downright bad. Thus you will find no discussions on biology or economics on this site. Dawkins and Harris, however, seem strangely unaware of this basic principle. Hence they exit their own areas of expertise (biology and neuroscience, respectively) and brashly venture into the area of philosophy of religion and make minor league arguments against religious belief or the existence of God. They then parade these average arguments around in their books and articles and thereby claim that religion is intellectually defeated and that all religious belief is irrational.

You can see how this irks someone like me. The worst part of it is that Dawkins and Harris both say that religious belief in general causes violence (or at least more violence than enlightened atheism) and that religious people are the cause of much conflict and misery in the world. This is typical of polemicists such as these, but consider another scenario. Imagine if someone like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell were to claim that Islamic belief in general causes violence and that Muslims were the cause of most of the conflict and misery in the world. There would be no end of outrage in the land of the talking heads. Dawkins and Harris, however, cast an even wider net - on all religious people - and there is nary a cry of protest from the mainstream media.

Christians, for the most part, ignore Dawkins and Harris as wild-eyed atheist agitators (which they are) but they also fail to see the impact they and other antitheist polemicists are having on the culture. It's becoming vogue among a certain sector of young people to embrace Dawkinsian atheism. That Dawkins' and Harris' arguments do not merit the attention they receive is of no consequence. It's simply hip nowadays to bash religion as irrational, and two thousand years of theistic reasoning be damned! That these vitriolic Dawkinsians (the above mentioned legions of internet trolls being the most visible) ignore good arguments contrary to their own position is a moot point. They spread their message effectively, and I'm afraid Christian philosophers and apologists suffer from the same malady as the rest of Christendom: they do not take Dawkins and Harris seriously, and hence they ignore the spread of militant atheism right under their noses.

Because of all this I am considering changing the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation. I had planned on doing something in the area of metaethics, but now I'm considering writing on the philosophical merits of Richard Dawkins' antitheist arguments. I'm also working on a long series of posts called "Letter to the Atheist Agitators" in which I show that the arguments of these atheist evangelists are not as strong as their supporters theink they are, and that they are - at some points - embarrassingly poor. I'm also considering taking Dawkins' latest arguments to task in a paper for one of my seminars this Spring, pending professor approval. So stay tuned. I have a lot more to say about the atheist agitators.

In an opinion piece at the Dubliner, the atheist bulldogmatist Richard Dawkins makes the following claim:

Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place.

So in Dawkins' worldview, raping kids is morally superior to teaching them to sing "Jesus Loves Me." I think it's safe to say that Dawkins can no longer be taken seriously. Such misguided fanaticism does not deserve a shred of respect, especially academic respect. I believe that after these comments all reasonable people - atheist, Christian, and Darwinist alike - are justified in labeling Dawkins a myopically-inclined idiot.

And yes, I did just coin the term "bulldogmatist." Maybe I'll get a patent for it.

[HT to Jeremy Pierce]

"My guess is that Dawkins just doesn't know enough about the history of secular humanism to realise that Darwin killed off man at the same time as he killed off God."

- Sociologist Steve Fuller in an interview at The Guardian