Bob Stewart, NOBTS
You can get this PPT file by
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or
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Introducing the New Atheism
Their Core Beliefs
•
Science and Religion are mutually
exclusive ways of looking at life. In
short, Religion and Science are at
war.
Richard Dawkins
“An atheist before Darwin
could have said, following
Hume: ‘I have no
explanation for complex
biological design. All I know
is that God isn’t a good
explanation, so we must
wait and hope that
somebody comes up with a
better one.’ I can't help
feeling that such a position,
Richard Dawkins
though logically sound,
would have left one feeling
pretty unsatisfied, and that
although atheism might
have been logically tenable
before Darwin, Darwin made
it possible to be an
intellectually fulfilled
atheist.”
The Blind Watchmaker, 6
Daniel Dennett
“Almost no one is indifferent to
Darwin, and no one should be. The
Darwinian theory is a scientific
theory, and a great one, but that is
not all it is. The creationists who
oppose it so bitterly are right about
one thing: Darwin’s dangerous idea
cuts much deeper into the fabric of
our most fundamental beliefs than
many of its sophisticated apologists
have yet admitted, even to
themselves.”
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 18
Atheistic Shrillness
“It is absolutely safe to
say that if you meet
somebody who claims
not to believe in
evolution, that person is
ignorant, stupid or
insane (or wicked, but
I’d rather not consider
that).”
Review of Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution,
Maitland A. Edey and Donald C. Johanson, New York
Times Review of Books 9 April 1989, 35
Their Core Beliefs
Science and religion are mutually
exclusive ways of looking at life. In
short, Religion and Science are at
war.
• “Faith” is a superstitious blind leap
based on the denial of evidence.
•
Faith as Superstition
“Faith is the great copout, the great excuse to
evade the need to think
and evaluate evidence.
Faith is belief in spite of,
even perhaps because of,
the lack of evidence.”
Sam Harris
“Some propositions
are so dangerous
that it may even be
ethical to kill people
for believing them.”
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror,
and the Future of Reason, 52-53.
Their Core Beliefs
Science and religion are mutually
exclusive ways of looking at life. In
short, Religion and Science are at
war.
• “Faith” is a superstitious blind leap
based on the denial of evidence.
• Religion is inherently evil.
•
Nobel Prize Winner Steven Weinberg
“With or without
religion, you would
have good people
doing good things
and evil people
doing evil things.
But for good people
to do evil things,
that takes religion.”
The New York Times, April 20, 1999
Christopher Hitchens
“[Organized religion is]
violent, irrational, intolerant,
allied to racism and tribalism
and bigotry, invested in
ignorance and hostile to free
inquiry, contemptuous of
women and coercive toward
children.”
God is Not Great, 56
Richard Dawkins
“Revealed faith is not
harmless nonsense, it can be
lethally dangerous nonsense.
Dangerous because it gives
people unshakeable
confidence in their own
righteousness. Dangerous
because it gives them false
courage to kill themselves,
which automatically removes
normal barriers to killing
Richard Dawkins
others. . . . And dangerous
because we have all bought
into a weird respect, which
uniquely protects religion
from normal criticism. Let’s
now stop being so damned
respectful.”
“Has the World Changed?—
Part Two,” The Guardian,
October 11, 2001
Their Characteristic Practices
•
They have a superficial knowledge
of the Bible
Their Characteristic Practices
They have a superficial knowledge
of the Bible
• They are theological novices
•
Terry Eagleton
“Dawkins speaks scoffingly of
a personal God, as though it
were entirely obvious exactly
what this might mean. He
seems to imagine God, if not
exactly with a white beard,
then at least as some kind of
chap, however supersized. He
asks how this chap can speak
to billions of people
simultaneously, which is rather
like wondering why, if Tony
Terry Eagleton
Blair is an octopus, he has only
two arms. For JudeoChristianity, God is not a
person in the sense that Al
Gore arguably is. Nor is he a
principle, an entity, or
‘existent’: in one sense of that
word it would be perfectly
coherent for religious types to
claim that God does not in fact
exist. He is, rather, the
condition of possibility of any
Terry Eagleton
entity whatsoever, including
ourselves. He is the answer to
why there is something rather
than nothing. God and the
universe do not add up to two,
any more than my envy and
my left foot constitute a pair of
objects.”
“Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching”
London Review of Books,
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl0
1_.html
Terry Eagleton
“All I can claim in this
respect, alas, is that I think I
may know just about enough
theology to be able to spot
when someone like Richard
Dawkins or Christopher
Hitchens—a couplet I shall
henceforth reduce for
convenience to the solitary
signifier Ditchkins—is talking
out of the back of his neck.”
2008 Yale University Terry Lecture
Their Characteristic Practices
They have a superficial knowledge
of the Bible
• They are theological novices
• They are primarily anti-Christian
and anti-Muslim
•
Their Characteristic Practices
They have a superficial knowledge
of the Bible
• They are theological novices
• They are primarily anti-Christian
and anti-Muslim
• They are materialists
•
Naturalism, Atheism,
& Materialism
Naturalists can affirm the reality of
abstract entities such as numbers
or minds but these things exist
naturally, not supernaturally
• Materialists can affirm the existence
of God (Mormons are materialists)
•
Naturalism, Atheism,
& Materialism
Atheists can be religious (most
forms of Buddhism are atheistic)
• The New Atheists are all three—
naturalists, materialists, and
atheists
•
Does Science
(or Darwin)
Disprove God?
Believing Scientists
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nicholas Copernicus, Heliocentric Solar System
Galileo, Observational Astronomy, Kinematics
Johannes Kepler, Laws of Planetary Motion
Isaac Newton, Laws of Motion
Joseph Lister, Antiseptic surgery
Louis Pasteur, Bacteriology
Robert Boyle, Chemistry and Gas Dynamics
Georges Cuvier, Comparative Anatomy
Charles Babbage, Computer Science
Lord Rayleigh, Dimensional Analysis
John Ambrose Fleming, Electronics
James Clerk Maxwell, Electrodynamics
Michael Faraday, Electromagnetics and Field Theory
Lord Kelvin, Energetics
Henri Fabre, Entomology of Living Insects
George Stokes, Fluid Mechanics
Sir William Herschel, Galactic Astronomy
Gregor Mendel, Genetics
Matthew Maury, Oceanography
Agnostic Stephen Jay Gould
“To say it for all my colleagues
and for the umpteenth millionth
time . . . science simply cannot
(by its legitimate methods)
adjudicate the issue of God’s
possible superintendence of
nature. We neither affirm nor
deny it; we simply can’t comment
on it as scientists. . . .
. . . Either half my colleagues
are enormously stupid, or else
Agnostic Stephen Jay Gould
the science of Darwinism is fully
compatible with conventional
religious beliefs—and equally
compatible with atheism, thus
proving that the two great realms
of nature’s factuality and the
source of human morality do not
strongly overlap.”
“Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge: Book
Review of Darwin on Trial by Phillip E.
Johnson” Scientific American 267. 1
July 1992, 119.
Francis Collins
“For quite a while in my twenties I
was a pretty obnoxious atheist. At
the age of 27, after a good deal of
intellectual debating with myself
about the plausibility of faith, and
particularly with strong influence
from C. S. Lewis, I became
convinced that this was a decision
I wanted to make, and I became
by choice a Christian, a serious
Christian, who believes that faith is
not something that you just do on
Sunday, but if it makes any sense
at all, it is part of your whole life.
It’s the most important organizing
principle in my life.”
Does Religion Poison
Everything?
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Another Christian concept, no less crazy,
has passed even more deeply into the tissue
of modernity: the concept of the ‘equality
of souls before God.’ This concept furnishes
the prototype of all theories of equal rights:
mankind was first taught to stammer the
proposition of equality in a religious context,
and only later was it made into morality.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Aphorism 765
Keith Ward
“But consider a parallel case: politics
could also be said to be one of the
most destructive forces in human life.
In Russia and Cambodia, millions of
people have been killed in the name
of socialist political ideologies. In Latin
America, millions of people
“disappeared” in ruthless campaigns
of violence propagated by right-wing
politicians. Deception, hypocrisy and
misrepresentation are commonplace
in political life. Might we not be better
off in a world without politics too?
Keith Ward
Even science, often thought of as an
uninterested search for truth,
produces terrifying weapons of mass
destruction, and the most advanced
technology is used to destroy human
lives in ever more effective and brutal
ways. Would we be better off without
science as well?”
Keith Ward, Is Religion Dangerous?,
179-80
Thomas Crean
“Still, one point is worth
making in answer to the
author’s claim . . . that
‘religion causes people to do
evil things’. Insofar as this is
true, it has no tendency to
show that religion is itself a
bad thing, or that its message
is false. Love causes people to
do evil things; so does
patriotism. The love of a man
and a woman can lead to
unfaithfulness, to the
Thomas Crean
destruction of families and
even to murder. Patriotism
can lead to hatred and to the
indiscriminate bombing of
cities. None of this means that
either love or patriotism is a
bad thing. It simply means
that the weakness of human
nature is such that any great
object or cause may stir our
emotions as to lead us to act
against our better judgment.
If religion occasions evil as well
Thomas Crean
as good, this is no sign of its
falsity, but simply of its power
of attraction over human
nature. That in the name of
religion good men may do bad
things is no argument against
religion, unless crimes of
passion are arguments against
human love.”
Thomas Crean,
God is No Delusion, 118-19
So Why Am I
Not a Naturalist
(an Atheist)?
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting.
Naturalism.org
Naturalism as a worldview is based on the
premise that knowledge about what exists
and about how things work is best achieved
through the sciences, not personal
revelation or religious tradition. . . Scientific
empiricism has the necessary consequence
of unifying our knowledge of the world, of
placing all objects of understanding within
an overarching causal context. Under
naturalism, there is a single, natural world
in which phenomena arise.
http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm
Naturalism as Self-Refuting
One reason that I am not a naturalist is that
naturalism cannot be proved according to its
own methodology, i.e., the scientific
method. What sort of scientific experiment
could possibly be constructed to test such a
hypothesis? The answer is none. This
would not be a problem if the scientific
method were not viewed as the only
meaningful test for truth, but given that it is
this becomes a deal-killer.
Dawkins Contradicting Dawkins
“As an academic scientist, I am a
passionate Darwinian, believing
that natural selection is, if not the
only driving force in evolution,
certainly the only known force
capable of producing the illusion
of purpose which so strikes all
who contemplate nature. But at
the same time as I support
Darwinism as a scientist, I am a
passionate anti-Darwinian when it
comes to politics and how we
should conduct our human
affairs.”
A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on
Hope, Lies, Science, and Love, 10-11.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting.
Because Naturalism undermines human
rationality.
Naturalism and Reason
Naturalism undermines reason by insisting
that reason is the result of an organ
produced by a random process. Why
should we believe that reason is a reliable
guide to truth if naturalism is correct? Why
should we believe that any theory produced
by an organism that is itself produced by
random processes is true?
J. B. S. Haldane
“If my mental processes are
determined wholly by the
motions of atoms within my
brain, I have no reason to
suppose that my beliefs are
true . . . and hence I have no
reason to believe that my brain
is composed of atoms.”
“When I am Dead,” in
Possible Worlds ed. Carl A. Price (New
Brunswick: Transaction, 2002), 209.
Patricia Churchland
“Boiled down to essentials, a
nervous system enables the
organism to succeed in the four
F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting
and reproducing. The principle
chore of nervous systems is to
get the body parts where they
should be in order that the
organism may survive . . .
Improvements in sensorimotor
control confer an evolutionary
Patricia Churchland
advantage: a fancier style of
representing is advantageous
so long as it is geared to the
organism's way of life and
enhances the organism's
chances of survival. Truth,
whatever that is, definitely
takes the hindmost.”
Patricia Smith Churchland, “Epistemology
in the Age of Neuroscience” Journal of
Philosophy, 84 (October 1987), 548.
Richard Rorty
“The idea that one species of
organism is, unlike all the others,
oriented not just toward its own
uncreated prosperity but toward
Truth, is as un-Darwinian as the
idea that every human being has
a built-in moral compass—a
conscience that swings free of
both social history and individual
luck.”
“Untruth and Consequences,”
The New Republic, 31 July 1995, 32-36.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
•
Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting.
Because Naturalism undermines human
rationality.
Because Naturalism undermines human free
will.
Naturalism.org
From a naturalistic perspective, there are no
causally privileged agents, nothing that causes
without being caused in turn. Human beings act
the way they do because of the various influences
that shape them, whether these be biological or
social, genetic or environmental. We do not have
the capacity to act outside the causal connections
that link us in every respect to the rest of the
world. This means we do not have what many
people think of as free will, being able to cause
our behavior without our being fully caused in
turn.
http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm
Naturalism and Freedom
One way that naturalists will try to show that
we are physically determined is to show that
we can track certain types of reactions in the
brain scientifically. This shows only that our
thoughts are processed by the brain and that
certain brain states can tracked under the right
conditions. But what cannot be observed
without some reference to the world beyond
one’s brain is the specific content of that
mental activity. A scientist might be able to
Naturalism and Freedom
identify the part of the brain that is involved in
meditation or prayer but he cannot discern
what an individual is praying for—or to whom.
This is because the content of thought is not
found in the brain but in the mind. You can
look in my laptop and find the data that
translates to the words of this presentation but
you will not find the thoughts behind the words
in my computer because those thoughts are in
my mind, not the instrument that I use to
communicate those thoughts.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
•
•
Because Naturalism
Because Naturalism
rationality.
Because Naturalism
will.
Because Naturalism
is Self-Refuting.
undermines human
undermines human free
undermines morality.
Atheists Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson
“Human beings function better if they are
deceived by their genes into thinking that there
is a disinterested objective morality binding
upon them, which all should obey. We help
others because it is ‘right’ to help them and
because we know that they are inwardly
compelled to reciprocate in equal measure.
What Darwinian evolutionary theory shows is
that this sense of ‘right’ and the
corresponding sense of ‘wrong,’ feelings we
take to be above individual desire and in some
fashion outside biology, are in fact brought
about by ultimate biological processes.”
“Moral Philosophy as Applied Science,” Philosophy, 61 (1986): 179.
Naturalism.org
From a naturalistic perspective, behavior
arises out of the interaction between
individuals and their environment, not from
a freely willing self that produces behavior
independently of causal connections . . .
Therefore individuals don’t bear ultimate
originative responsibility for their actions, in
the sense of being their first cause. Given
the circumstances both inside and outside
the body, they couldn’t have done other
than what they did. Nevertheless, we must
Naturalism.org
still hold individuals responsible, in the
sense of applying rewards and sanctions, so
that their behavior stays more or less within
the range of what we deem acceptable. This
is, partially, how people learn to act
ethically. Naturalism doesn’t undermine the
need or possibility of responsibility and
morality, but it places them within the world
as understood by science.
http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm
Naturalism and Morality
How do we hold people responsible who
aren’t responsible? If we aren’t free, then
why do we call Francis of Assisi a Saint and
Jeffrey Dahmer a monster? If we aren’t free
(or rational), then why do atheists even
write books? It would seem that we are all
just determined to do what we do and there
can be no such thing as persuasion.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
•
•
•
Because Naturalism is Self-Refuting.
Because Naturalism undermines human
rationality.
Because Naturalism undermines human
freedom and free will.
Because Naturalism undermines morality.
Because Naturalism undermines human
relationality.
Naturalism and Relationships
If our actions are the result of physical causes,
then what of love? Why does your husband or
wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, love you? Why do
you love your significant other? Does he/she
do so freely? Do you? Not in a naturalist
world. Love is simply a byproduct of biology;
it’s in our glands, or some other physical
source. In a very real sense, then, in a
naturalist world we can say that love is in our
genes—but so is psychosis. On a material level,
it seems, then, that love and mental illness are
roughly the same.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
Because Naturalism cannot explain human
consciousness.
Richard Dawkins on Consciousness
“Neither Steven Pinker nor I
can explain human subjective
consciousness—what
philosophers call qualia. In How
the Mind Works Steven
elegantly sets out the problem
of subjective consciousness,
and asks where it comes from
and what’s the explanation.
Then he’s honest enough to say,
‘Beats the heck out of me.’
That is an honest thing to say,
and I echo it. We don’t know.
We don’t understand it.”
Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, “Is Science Killing The
Soul?” http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dawkins_pinker/debate_p4.html
Ned Block on Consciousness
“We have no conception of our
physical or functional nature that
allows us to understand how it could
explain our subjective experience. . . .
In the case of consciousness we have
nothing—zilch—worthy of being called
a research programme, nor are there
any substantive proposals about how
to go about starting one. . . .
Researchers are stumped.”
“Consciousness,” in A Companion
to Philosophy of Mind, 210-12.
John Searle
“Physical events can have
only physical explanations,
and consciousness is not
physical, so consciousness
plays no explanatory role
whatsoever. If, for example,
you think you ate because
you were consciously hungry,
or got married because you
were consciously in love with
your prospective spouse, or
John Searle
withdrew your hand from the
flame because you
consciously felt a pain, or
spoke up at a meeting
because you consciously
disagreed with the main
speaker, you are mistaken in
every case. In each case the
effect was a physical event
and therefore must have an
entirely physical
explanation.”
The Mystery of Consciousness, 154
.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
Because Naturalism cannot explain human
consciousness.
Because Naturalism denies the substantial
reality of the self.
Naturalism.org
As strictly physical beings, we don’t exist as
immaterial selves, either mental or spiritual, that
control behavior. Thought, desires, intentions,
feelings, and actions all arise on their own without
the benefit of a supervisory self, and they are all
the products of a physical system, the brain and
the body. The self is constituted by more or less
consistent sets of personal characteristics, beliefs,
and actions; it doesn’t exist apart from those
complex physical processes that make up the
individual. It may strongly seem as if there is a
self sitting behind experience, witnessing it, and
behind behavior, controlling it, but this impression
Naturalism.org
is strongly disconfirmed by a scientific
understanding of human behavior.
Tenets of Naturalism http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm
Naturalism.org
We are the evolved products of natural selection,
which operates without intention, foresight or
purpose. Nothing about us escapes being
included in the physical universe, or escapes being
shaped by the various processes—physical,
biological, psychological, and social—that science
describes. On a scientific understanding of
ourselves, there’s no evidence for immaterial
souls, spirits, mental essences, or disembodied
selves which stand apart from the physical world.
Tenets of Naturalism http://www.naturalism.org/tenetsof.htm
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
•
Because Naturalism cannot explain human
consciousness.
Because Naturalism denies the substantial
reality of the self.
Because even if Darwinism is true, it doesn’t
necessarily lead to Naturalism.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
•
•
Because Naturalism cannot explain human
consciousness.
Because Naturalism denies the substantial
reality of the self.
Because even if Darwinism is true, it doesn’t
necessarily lead to Naturalism.
Because Naturalism has no answer to the
problem of evil.
Why I Am Not a Naturalist
•
•
•
•
•
Because Naturalism cannot explain human
consciousness.
Because Naturalism denies the substantial
reality of the self.
Because even if Darwinism is true, it doesn’t
necessarily lead to Naturalism.
Because Naturalism has no answer to the
problem of evil.
Because Naturalism often appeals to ad hoc
solutions, such as “Memes.”
Richard Dawkins on Memes
“We need a name for the new
replicator, a noun that conveys the
idea of a unit of cultural transmission,
or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes
from a suitable Greek root, but I want
a monosyllable that sounds a bit like
‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will
forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to
meme. If it is any consolation, it could
alternatively be thought of as being
related to ‘memory’, or to the French
word même. It should be pronounced
to rhyme with ‘cream’.”
The Selfish Gene, 11
Simon Conway Morris on Memes
“Memes are trivial,
to be banished by
simple mental
exercises. In any
wider context, they
are hopelessly, if
not hilariously,
simplistic.”
Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans
in a Lonely Universe, 324
Practical Strategies for
talking to Atheists
General Strategies
•
•
•
•
•
Use their authorities.
DO NOT ARGUE EVOLUTION. This is
like trying to get to Baton Rouge by
going through Australia.
Don’t argue the age of the earth.
Focus on Physics and Cosmology
rather than Biology.
Use questions.
Strategy #1
Ask them if they think they freely
don’t believe in God.
• Ask them if they think they are
rational and can reason their way to
the truth on important issues.
• Ask how certain they are.
• Ask them how this can be the case if
naturalism, i.e., materialism is true.
•
Strategy #1
•
Ask them which they are more
certain about—materialism or their
own freedom and rationality.
Strategy #2
Ask them if they believe in
investigation and research.
• Ask them how they have investigated
the question of God.
• Ask them how important this issue is.
• Ask them if the intensity of their
investigation has been proportional
to the importance of the issue.
•
Strategy #3
Ask them how old the universe is.
• They will generally say that the
universe is more than 13 billion years
old (because that’s what standard big
bang cosmology indicates). They
often assume that all Christians
believe in a young universe.
•
Strategy #3
Point out to them that if something
has an age, it has a beginning.
• Point out that if something has a
beginning, it has a cause—and that
they have already agreed that the
universe has a beginning. Therefore
the universe has a cause.
•
Strategy #3
Note: We have not proved “God,”
and certainly not the Christian God,
but this “cause” is consistent with the
Christian view of God.
• Note: The age of the universe is NOT
an issue with this approach. The key
is getting them to admit that the
universe has an age!
•
Strategy #3*
When you ask them how old the
universe is, they may say that the
universe is eternal.
• Ask them why it is that every part of
the universe that we know of shows
signs of age, thus indicating that
each and every part of the universe
is temporal, i.e., not eternal.
•
Strategy #3*
•
Note: I am NOT suggesting that we
argue from the fact that every part of
the universe is temporal to the
universe itself being temporal. To do
so would be to commit (or as least
appear to commit) the fallacy of
composition. Asking questions is not
making arguments.
Strategy #3*
Also ask why it is that they don’t
accept the standard big bang
cosmology. In other words, why they
are going against the scientific
consensus on this point.
• They may say that they believe in
either an oscillating universe or a
universe ensemble (multiverse).
•
Strategy #3*
Point out to them that there is no
evidence of either (though each is
logically possible).
• Ask them how either is a scientific
hypothesis, given that neither is
falsifiable (or observable).
• Ask them how either is simpler than
the standard big bang cosmology.
•
Q&A
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