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The Tortured Logic of the New Atheism (Please refute?)

Started by ForTheLoveOfAll, February 17, 2011, 02:52:37 AM

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ForTheLoveOfAll

Martin Cothran wrote an article which was recently published in The Classical Teacher, a catalog by Memoria Press. It's a Christian organization that puts out "classical" teaching for homeschoolers in a Christian format. A couple of years ago I took one of Martin's courses in Logic and Debate. (Learned about syllogisms, etc.)

This article upset me a bit, and I'd like all of your thoughts on it. His logic seems a bit... off, IMHO.

QuoteThe Tortured Logic of the New Atheism

-Martin Cothran


From the new issue of The Classical Teacher Magazine

The atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once told the story of a cave in the East in which, for many years after the death of Buddha, visitors could still see his shadow:

God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be cast.â€" And weâ€"we still must vanquish even his shadow!
Nietzsche was wrong about the death of God, but he was realistic about what the rejection of God implied, and he despised those who rejected God but refused to accept the logical implications of that unbelief. He may have been wrong, but at least he was consistent. In particular, he reviled those who rejected Christianity but refused to give up Christian morality. He sarcastically called such people “Englishmen,” because he saw the English of the Victorian period in which he lived as especially guilty of acknowledging the shadow of Christian morality in the wake of the death of the God in whom alone such morality could be justified.

One wonders what choice words Nietzsche would have for the new breed of atheists who now populate the bestseller lists. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, and Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great are just several examples of the spate of books by prominent modern atheists, known as the “New Atheists,” that have climbed the bestseller charts with surprising ease over the last two or three years, all of whom purport to reject God, but who nevertheless cling to a form of Christian morality.

Nietzsche is not alone in his assumption that religion and morality are intimately bound together. It has long been assumed by most people that their moral beliefs are dependent upon religious conviction. “If there is no God,” asserts Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamozov, “then everything is possible.” A belief in morality, they think, must be undergirded by a belief in God.

But the New Atheists beg to differ. Morality, they say, has no need of God.

One of the most common problems in argument is agreeing on the question that is really in dispute. There are two ways in which this can be a problem. The first is when the terms are not clear. When we ask whether morality requires a religious foundation, for example, we should be very clear on what we mean by “morality.” Which virtues are we talking about when we ask this question?

There were, in fact, moral beliefs before Christianity came along. There are two kinds of virtue: the cardinal (or classical) virtues: Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Courage; and the theological (or Christian) virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity. The first four, the cardinal virtues, not only can be sustained without explicit religious belief; they in fact were. They arose in a world, not without religion, but without religions that said much about morality.

The cardinal virtues have also been called the “practical” virtues. They had mostly to do with getting along in life. The most familiar examples of this were Aesop’s Fables. Aesop was reputed to have been a Greek slave in a Roman household, and the ethics in his stories have to do exclusively with the practical virtues. Faith, Hope, and Charity are absent, but the practical virtues, particularly Prudence, are there in abundance. The tortoise knows the virtue of patience and determination and wins his race with the hare; the crane learns that, in serving the wicked, there is no reward; the boy who cries wolf learns that honesty is the best policy.

All these cases involve sheer self-preservation. This is of the essence of pagan morality: it is exclusively self-preservative or at least self-gratifying (and usually applied only to other members of one’s tribe or race). There is nothing wrong with the practical virtues, as long as we acknowledge them to be incomplete. They may be said to be “rational” virtues in the sense that we can identify reasons for practicing them; namely, that they will help us make it through life with less pain and more pleasure.

But there is nothing in Aesop like the parables of the Good Samaritan, or the Lost Sheep, or the Prodigal Son. The theological virtues are completely different from the practical or classical virtues in this: there is literally no practical reason for them. What purely self-preservative reason is there to act selflessly? Why love your neighbor if you can take from him and benefit yourself? Why would any shepherd, looking to benefit himself, lay down his very life for his sheep?

It is theoretically possible for the practical virtues to be rationally justified without a belief in God. But this is not the case with the theological virtues. The theological virtues cannot survive the abandonment of religion. And yet the New Atheists want to say that they can.

The problem with the atheist’s argument is that it confounds these two kinds of moralityâ€"the practical and the theological. A case in point is their argument that morality can be explained through a Darwinist view of evolution: morality, they say, has survivability value. Those who are moral are more likely to survive than those who aren’t. Therefore, those who are more moral are morely likely to survive than those who are less moral.

But how can evolution explain why we should treat others with selfless charity? How can evolution explain the survival value of seeing a beaten and half-dead man at the side of the road who cannot possibly do anything for us, and treating his wounds and taking care of him, and then giving two silver coins to the innkeeper and saying, “look after him”? How can this be said to have any survivability value, and what rational reason can we point to that justifies going and doing likewise?

Evolution cannot explain this.

The second problem in trying to determine the question at issue has to do with how the question is stated. The question is whether an atheist can rationally justify moral belief. The question is not whether athiests can be moral. This is a completely different question.

When, in his chapter, “The Roots of Morality: Why are We Good?,” Dawkins argues that morality is the product of evolution, he completely confuses the two questions. His argument is designed to explain why people are good; not why they should be good. It explains the physical cause, but does not provide the logical ground of their (or our) good behavior. It doesn’t provide a rational ground for being good; it only provides a historical explanation (and not a very convincing one) for why, in fact, we sometimes are.

But the process by which an act comes about can tell me nothing about whether or not it was a good or bad act, since bad acts are brought about by a process just like good acts are. I can explain the physical factors leading up to the Holocaust just like I can explain the physical factors leading up to Mother Theresa’s mission to the poor in Calcutta, India. But the chronology of these two events can tell me nothing about why one is bad and the other is good.

The past arrangement of molecules may tell me something about why I feel a certain way, but it tells me nothing about why I should feel a certain way.

New Atheists like Dawkins are either confused themselves about these distinctions, in which case they are not qualified to talk about morality, or they are clear about the distinctions but are counting on their listeners themselves being confused about them, in which case they are being deceptive.

If I am faced with a situation like that of the Good Samaritan, and I see a man lying by the side of the road who needs help, I can get no help from the argument of Dawkins and the neoatheists. Their theory can tell me nothing about whether I should help the man or whether I should simply go on about my business and not trouble myself with helping him. I can do either one and be justified in knowing that my genes have made me do it.

There are only two logical positions a person can hold on the issue of religion and morality. Here is the Christian argument:

If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified
But morality can be justified
Therefore God must exist
Nietzsche and existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre agree to the first, or “major” premise but supply a different second, or “minor” premise, and take the argument in a different logical direction:

If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified
God does not exist
Therefore, morality cannot be justified
Both of these arguments are equally logical: the Christian performs what, in logic is called a modus tollens, which is a way of reasoning negatively backwards; the existentialist performs what, in logic, is called a modus ponens, which is a way of reasoning affirmatively forwards. Both reasoning negatively backwards and reasoning affirmatively forward are logically valid.

The existentialist understands his predicament, which is why existentialists like Nietzsche and Sartre rejected Christian morality (and meaning and purpose) outright. They were wrong, but they were intellectually consistent.

The New Athiest, however, tries to deny the obvious. He questions the major premise: “If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified.” He wants to have his philosophical cake and eat it too. But, as we have seen, he can find no competent argument to justify moral beliefs such as charity, but he holds them anyway.

He is an “Englishman.”
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

Sophus

QuoteNietzsche was wrong about the death of God, but he was realistic about what the rejection of God implied, and he despised those who rejected God but refused to accept the logical implications of that unbelief...
Nietzsche is not alone in his assumption that religion and morality are intimately bound together.
Has this person ever read Nietzsche? If so then they're about as dishonest as they come. Nietzsche warned of nihilism and what it would do. He didn't want to destroy morality but see it in a new light (morality as not being objective or facile). The same with meaningfulness in life. He was an existentialist, meaning he thought we could create our own meaning and virtues. So not only does this person misunderstand Nietzsche, they try to impose his beliefs and way of thinking on all atheists.

QuoteEvolution cannot explain this.
Actually yes, evolution can explain why we developed empathy.  :brick:
‎"Christian doesn't necessarily just mean good. It just means better." - John Oliver

ForTheLoveOfAll

Quote from: "Sophus"
QuoteNietzsche was wrong about the death of God, but he was realistic about what the rejection of God implied, and he despised those who rejected God but refused to accept the logical implications of that unbelief...
Nietzsche is not alone in his assumption that religion and morality are intimately bound together.
Has this person ever read Nietzsche? If so then they're about as dishonest as they come. Nietzsche warned of nihilism and what it would do. He didn't want to destroy morality but see it in a new light (morality as not being objective or facile). The same with meaningfulness in life. He was an existentialist, meaning he thought we could create our own meaning and virtues. So not only does this person misunderstand Nietzsche, they try to impose his beliefs and way of thinking on all atheists.

QuoteEvolution cannot explain this.
Actually yes, evolution can explain why we developed empathy.  :brick:

Mr. Cothran is a hardcore Christian, so he probably had an automatically bastardized view of Nietzsche's work.

He seems to have lack of understanding of the "Survival Of The Fittest" also.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

SSY

Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified
God does not exist
Therefore, morality cannot be justified

There were plenty of obvious mistakes in this article, but this one really takes the biscuit. If I took a course in logic from this guy, I would ask for my money back. Christians hogging the morality stage really annoy me, supplying your own waffle, then using it to base arguments like this upon, in lieu of an actual atheist doing it, is terribly dishonest.
Quote from: "Godschild"SSY: You are fairly smart and to think I thought you were a few fries short of a happy meal.
Quote from: "Godschild"explain to them how and why you decided to be athiest and take the consequences that come along with it
Quote from: "Aedus"Unlike atheists, I'm not an angry prick

ForTheLoveOfAll

Quote from: "SSY"
Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified
God does not exist
Therefore, morality cannot be justified

There were plenty of obvious mistakes in this article, but this one really takes the biscuit. If I took a course in logic from this guy, I would ask for my money back. Christians hogging the morality stage really annoy me, supplying your own waffle, then using it to base arguments like this upon, in lieu of an actual atheist doing it, is terribly dishonest.
Agreed. His syllogism is Logically sound, follows from the premise to the conclusion without any error, BUT, the premise itself is untrue, it's an assumption with nothing to back it up.

The entire point of his article was really to try and prove that God was the only explanation for morality, which of course is hogwash.

I don't see what's so wrong with seeing that good can be done for goodness sake, to help our fellow man and woman, not just to please the strange desires of some cosmic granddaddy.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

Stevil

QuoteWhat purely self-preservative reason is there to act selflessly? Why love your neighbor if you can take from him and benefit yourself?
I feel that some Christians are so totally selfish from their quest to get into heaven that they can't understand why people would do such things when there is no reward of heaven. I also think some Christians redefine the word "selfless" to exculde acts done purely to get ones self into heaven. It is my understanding that only Atheists can truly be selfless.

QuoteHow can evolution explain the survival value of seeing a beaten and half-dead man at the side of the road who cannot possibly do anything for us, and treating his wounds and taking care of him, and then giving two silver coins to the innkeeper and saying, “look after him”? How can this be said to have any survivability value, and what rational reason can we point to that justifies going and doing likewise?
Just like dogs, elephants, and many other social animals, humans have the desire to look after their weak. A group that works together is much stronger than the individual that works alone. Let's face it, we all have our weak moments, whether we are striken by disease, have had an accident, are experiencing extreme emotions, we all need help at one point or other.

QuoteThe second problem in trying to determine the question at issue has to do with how the question is stated. The question is whether an atheist can rationally justify moral belief.
The problem I have is that this Christian is trying to claim that our values are "owned" by Christianity, as if Christianity invented them. What I call "values", Christians have packaged up and classified as "morals". We do have lots of values/morals in common, but there are lots of points of difference as well. My values are not as black and white as that preached by Christianity. For example in normal circumstances I would not "kill" other people. However I believe that for a terminally ill patient with no hope for cure, no hope for life without pain and with a strong desire for peace, a will to die, I think this person has the right to elective euthanasia. My values are more tolerant than morals preached by Christianity, I feel homosexuals have the right to practice their desires with a mutual lover, these people are not sinners, they are not sick. They are people who happen to be in love, this love should be rejoiced and encouraged. People should be happy, and should not deny themselves happiness in order to make the Church happy or other people with lack of tolerance or who practice discrimination happy. I feel I am not alone in the Atheist community here. I feel the vast majority of atheists are far more tolerant, selfless and loving than Christians who live by the Christian standard of morality.

ForTheLoveOfAll

QuoteI feel I am not alone in the Atheist community here. I feel the vast majority of atheists are far more tolerant, selfless and loving than Christians who live by the Christian standard of morality.

This can be proven by comparing the percentage of religious VS non-religious folk in prisons, and reading a few history books. Religion and the religious have been at the forefront of suffering in humanities history.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

Whitney

I don't know about what nietzsche thought about morality (nor does it matter to the reader's conclusion since his arguments for or against weren't cited in the article)...but the author obviously is confused on multiple points (I have only read about half as I'm headed out):

1.  Duh, of course theological morals won't exist without god...that's because they are based on dogma.  Not a single atheist writer I have read argues that god based morality would exist without a god concept.  IE, we aren't going to value faith in god unless we believe in a god.  All comments related to that point are, frankly, stupid and probably intended to mislead the reader.

2.  Evolution can explain altruism...there are examples of such behavior in other animals and an increasing amount of research being done in the field of evolutionary ethics.  Basically, altruistic behavior is good for the social species and so if some of the members of that species act altruistically (even if others act selfishly) they are still protected by the overall survivability of the group and their family genes get passed on.  Obviously for a species that has a sophisticated form of communication we are going to be able to shun those who act selfishly and praise those who act altruistically...making it a a positive moral as far as survival is concerned in humans (at least as long as civilization remains intact).

I'm sure there are other dumb things to respond to but that's all I have for now.

LegendarySandwich

Quote from: "Article"The New Athiest, however, tries to deny the obvious. He questions the major premise: “If God does not exist, then morality cannot be justified.” He wants to have his philosophical cake and eat it too. But, as we have seen, he can find no competent argument to justify moral beliefs such as charity, but he holds them anyway.
How about the competent argument of "I want to"? Seems to work for me.

wildfire_emissary

This begs the question: Is an act moral because god said so? Or is it moral regardless of what god said?
"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." -Voltaire

ForTheLoveOfAll

Quote1. Duh, of course theological morals won't exist without god...that's because they are based on dogma. Not a single atheist writer I have read argues that god based morality would exist without a god concept. IE, we aren't going to value faith in god unless we believe in a god. All comments related to that point are, frankly, stupid and probably intended to mislead the reader.

 

Excellent point there. Certain morals were made up that just go so against human instinct that some would suppose they couldn't of been invented by humans. They're just another form of mind control.

QuoteHow about the competent argument of "I want to"? Seems to work for me.

Amen.  :|
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

wildfire_emissary

Quote from: "ForTheLoveOfAll"
Quote
QuoteThis begs the question: Is an act moral because god said so? Or is it moral regardless of what god said?

Well, the God of the Bible does many things that are VERY immoral, and would be obviously immoral to anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated in the religion all throughout their life. Morality seems to be a matter of personal opinion, but some things just stand to reason as being "evil." (Rape, murder, etc.)

A good rule of thumb is that if it harms another unnecessasarily, it's probably immoral. And certain things are immoral regardless of what a god would say. Unless you're a theist, in which case god can create morals at a whim.  :|

That is exactly my point. Regardless of whatever god said, morality is beyond him. That is if there is one.
"All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." -Voltaire

The Magic Pudding

Quote from: "Sophus"Actually yes, evolution can explain why we developed empathy.  :brick:

If natural selection couldn't explain it I'd think sexual selection might.

ForTheLoveOfAll

I think I might mail a few of the points made here to Memoria Press.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
-Carl Sagan

I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
- Bill Hicks

penfold

This is a really bad article. I mean really bad. That it is published as 'educational' actually makes me a little bit angry.

There is so much to say. From the lazy generalities, to the frankly bizarre analysis of ancient notions of virtue. But my life is too short. So I will focus my distemper on Mr Corthan's bastardized view of Nietzsche.

He says:
QuoteNietzsche was wrong about the death of God, but he was realistic about what the rejection of God implied, and he despised those who rejected God but refused to accept the logical implications of that unbelief. He may have been wrong, but at least he was consistent. In particular, he reviled those who rejected Christianity but refused to give up Christian morality. He sarcastically called such people “Englishmen,” because he saw the English of the Victorian period in which he lived as especially guilty of acknowledging the shadow of Christian morality in the wake of the death of the God in whom alone such morality could be justified.

Ok. First off, describing Nietzsche as 'consistent' is just wrong. The man shifts his stance, not only between books, but even within them. More importantly this is a misrepresentation of what Nietzsche says on morality. The man writes far better than I do so here is a quote from Twilight of the Idols, one of his last books, on the subject of morality:

Quote- I formulate a principle. All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct of life - some commandment of life is fulfilled through a certain canon of 'shall' and 'shall not',, some hindrance and hostile element on life's road is thereby removed. Anti-natural morality, that is virtually every morality that has hiterto been taught, reverenced and preached, turns on the contrary precisely against the instincts of life - it is now a secret, now loud and impudent condemnation of these instincts. By saying 'God sees into the heart' it denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life.... The saint in whom God takes pleasure is the ideal castrate.... Life is at an end where the 'Kingdom of God' begins....
- Twilight of the Idols - Morality as Anti-Nature, prt 4 (trans. Hollingdale)

What we see here is that Nietzsche is not attacking morality per se, but rather a type of morality preached by figures such as Socrates and Kant, and finding its highest expression in the Christian method. So Mr Cothran is simply wrong to imply that Nietzsche thinks that:
Quote...religion and morality are intimately bound together.
Or that the New Atheists are somehow at loggerheads with Nietzsche:
Quotethe New Atheists beg to differ. Morality, they say, has no need of God.
In fact Nietzsche makes exactly this same claim!

More worryingly he then goes on to point to a "flaw" in the works of the New Atheism: [BOLD my own]
QuoteDawkins argues that morality is the product of evolution, he completely confuses the two questions. His argument is designed to explain why people are good; not why they should be good. It explains the physical cause, but does not provide the logical ground of their (or our) good behavior. It doesn’t provide a rational ground for being good; it only provides a historical explanation (and not a very convincing one) for why, in fact, we sometimes are.

[...]

The past arrangement of molecules may tell me something about why I feel a certain way, but it tells me nothing about why I should feel a certain way.

I wonder if anyone else, prior to Dawkins, has rejected the discussion of morality as one of how we should act and focused on the reality of why we act? An acerbic German philosopher perhaps?

QuoteLet us consider finally what naivety it is to say 'man ought to be thus and thus!' Reality shows us an enchanting wealth of types, the luxuriance of a prodigal play and change of forms: and does some pitiful journeyman moralist say at the sight of it: 'No! man ought to be different'?
- Twilight of the Idols Morality as Anti-Nature, prt 6 (trans. Hollingdale)

If Dawkins et al's focus on what is rather than what ought makes them:
Quoteeither confused themselves about these distinctions, in which case they are not qualified to talk about morality, or they are clear about the distinctions but are counting on their listeners themselves being confused about them, in which case they are being deceptive.
Then, by the same logic, so is Nietzsche.

I don't have an answer to Mr Cothran's question as to the choice words Nietzsche would call the 'New Atheists' (my guess is they would not be kind, but then Nietzsche did not like anyone much). However I know what Nietzsche would have called Cothran, it is in the above quote: a "pitiful journeyman moralist".

peace