III. The Irrelevancies.
Something is
irrelevant just in the case its affirmation or denial can be accepted by either
party who disputes some other claim. So, for instance, that the North Pole is
north of Canada is irrelevant to whether or not the 40th president
was John F. Kennedy. Its truth doesn’t have any implications for the claim
under consideration. With that in mind, we turn to a couple of examples in this
article of irrelevancies.
First, he claims
that “morality does not require any religious belief.” That seems a bit
ambiguous, but fortunately for us, he explains what he means. “The ability to
distinguish right from wrong does not require any religious beliefs.” While
this disambiguation is itself ambiguous (is it really the ability to distinguish right from wrong does not require God or
that religious belief be true, or the
ability to distinguish right from wrong does not require belief in God or
belief in religious claims? It’s not 100% clear, but I lean toward the
latter for his meaning.), it seems he is reacting against the perceived claim
that atheists act immorally. Well, taking his meaning, I think we can agree. It
seems obvious that atheists can act immorally or morally, independent of their
religious beliefs.
However, this is just irrelevant to the truth of the Christian God’s existence
(or really, any god). It doesn’t follow that God doesn’t exist from the truth
of “atheists can act in such a way as to conform to moral duties and
obligations.” It doesn’t even follow from that that the argument for God from
morality fails! That is, one is completely consistent in affirming this claim and the claim that God grounds morality.
Second, it is
claimed that religion has been used to control the masses. Again, it’s not
clear what’s being claimed here: does he mean that, for every religion, there
is at least one instance of it being abused to control people? Or does he mean
that, for every religion, it is always and only used to control people? Or does
he mean that, for every religion, it is usually used to control people? Let’s
say the first definition is under consideration. What’s supposed to be the
argument? There is none given, so we have to infer it. I suppose it would be
something like: “If any religion X has ever been used to control the masses, it
is false.” But why should we believe something like that? That claim is,
essentially, that if some arena’s power structures abuse that power, that the
factual content of beliefs that they do hold are false. I don’t see any reason
to believe that. Without such a claim, however, it’s clear that the definition
is irrelevant. Let’s look at the second definition. Not every instantiation of
Christian exercises has been used for control purposes, so it would just be
false (consider charities, amongst other examples). The third definition also
needs some kind of argument in order to avoid irrelevancies. It occurs to me we
can try to strengthen the argument thusly: “If any religion X normally abuses
its power by way of its beliefs, then those beliefs have come about for
irrational reasons, and are not justified in being held to be true.” This is
the strongest version of an argument that I can come up with. Unfortunately, it’s
just not true. This is because it’s not only possible, but even likely, that
the beliefs were formed first, and then these beliefs are used to control the
masses. So, for instance, depending on what we mean by control, Christian
churches will insist that one accepts the deity of Christ, and may even use
that rule as a control on membership. But most, if not all, of these church
leaders of individual churches adopted belief in Christ’s deity before the
belief that this needed to be a control on church membership.
Third, the next irrelevancy
concerns the “why” of one’s holding of their faith. This is actually spread out
over two points. First, he wants a reason of “why they believe so strongly in
their faith besides being raised in the dogma’s environment.” It looks like we
can discern two senses of “why” here: first, the sense of the origin of belief,
and second, of the reasons for belief. This will be important to remember on
the next point. The reason this is irrelevant is that even if the believer has
absolutely no other explanation for why he believes, and no argument for why
God exists (good or otherwise), it won’t follow that God does not exist. At
worst, it’s a fact about the purported rationality of a given individual for
believing that God does exist.
The second point he makes is a counterfactual one. If you were raised in
another religious tradition, would you hold the religious beliefs you do hold?
Presumably, the answer is supposed to be “no,” and then from there, it
(presumably, since he doesn’t say) follows that one is unjustified in believing
God exists. But again, the reason this is irrelevant is because one can happily
concede he is unjustified in saying that God exists, but that it won’t follow
that we should believe God doesn’t
exist.
IV. The
Inaccuracies.
This next
section will tackle a few inaccuracies of this article. First, there is the
issue just discussed: the counterfactual “truth” that if one were raised in
another environment, he would adopt other religious beliefs than what he has;
therefore, one is unjustified in holding the religious beliefs he does hold.
That won’t work for more than one reason. First, it’s a textbook example of the
genetic fallacy: the origin of one’s belief does not indicate its truth or
falsehood. Second, it’s not clear the counterfactual is true in every case (in
fact, it’s not). There are people who convert to other religions than their
native environment all the time (that it’s not the majority case makes no
difference). So it’s “doubly fallacious,” as it were.
Next, there is a
section that talks about life after death. In an amazing claim, he urges his
fellow atheists to “ask them to explain near-death or death experiences that
many people have related, and why they never speak of seeing any ‘heaven,’ ‘god,’
‘angels’ or anything of the sort.” This claim is just inaccurate. In fact, Gary
Habermas has contributed to a large volume arguing differently (and even
arguing from “non-spiritual” NDEs to supernaturalism, which is not acceptable
on naturalism, obviously). Even if Habermas is ultimately wrong, it still
follows that the claim is inaccurate.
Third, there is
something resembling an argument from scientism. The first premise is “if
something exists, it can be scientifically quantified,” with the second premise
being, “scientists have quantified millions of items.” The conclusion of the
argument is, “Therefore, if something cannot be scientifically quantified, then
it does not exist.” The problem is that the conclusion is simply the
contrapositive of the first premise, so that the argument is circular.
While the inference from the first premise to the conclusion is logically valid
(though circular), the second premise doesn’t serve to prove either the
conclusion or the first premise. In fact, if we decide that really there’s only
one premise trying to support the one conclusion, then the argument isn’t
logically valid at all. So why think that if something exists, it must be
scientifically quantified? Based on his description, only those already
committed to physicalism should accept this. Presumably, theists are not
physicalists, so while it’s an interesting fact about physicalism, it’s not
compelling.
There is so much
more that could be said (including the denial that atheism is a belief
precisely one sentence before declaring that they have to prove God does not
exist [presumably they at least believe what they’re trying to prove, don’t
they?]; the naïve philosophy of science whereby they conclude that “almost
everything” in science has been proven; the Who Made God? objection as
decisive, etc.), but these two articles have given this how-to more attention
than it deserves. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions below!