Of New Atheists and Noble Lies
I began last week by responding to Jerry Coyne’s broadside against my Christmas column, so I suppose it’s fitting to begin this one by responding toNoah Millman’s lament that I need to “argue with better atheists,” instead of “weak combatants” like Coyne. My facile response to that line is that I’ll argue with better atheists when America’s flagship journal of liberal opinionpublishes better atheists attacking things I’ve written; my more serious response is that my quarrel with atheism grows cooler and more modest the more serious (in my admittedly-biased view) the atheist in question. I’ll elaborate on that a bit below, but first, here’s Millman’s more serious complaint about my response to Coyne:
I’m not an atheist myself, but I’m particularly skeptical of Douthat’s “morality-has-no-foundation-without-God” style of argument for religion, so I’ll enter the lists on the opposing side for the moment …
Douthat complains that Coyne’s argument is circular: “If my question is ‘what’s the justification for your rights-based egalitarianism?’ saying, ‘because it’s egalitarian!’ is not much of an answer.” But his own argument is equally circular: secular liberalism is “unjustified” because it lacks a foundation in belief in God, but a belief in God is “justified” because without it you don’t have a foundation for morality! I don’t know about Douthat, but I suspect that, at least some of the time, what I’m really hearing with this kind of argument is a species of Straussianism. To whit: yes, I know, and you know, that there isn’t really any arguing with a cold and empty cosmos. But most people can’t handle that kind of truth; they need to believe that there’s an objective meaning to their lives. So, for the sake of the greater good, we have to affirm publicly that there is such a thing, that God is the foundation of morality. I’ve always suspected that Strauss would have got on just fine with the Grand Inquisitor; in any event I’ve never liked this line of argument.
Nor have I, and I’m happy to clarify this point, because it’s crucial to my disagreement with Coyne and many other new-atheist polemicists. I would not, emphatically not, justify a belief in God on the grounds that without it you don’t have a foundation for morality. My argument is more limited: I’m proposing that a belief in God and a belief in moral realism — and, by extension, a belief in ideas like the rights-based liberalism on which our civilization is founded — form a coherent world-picture in a way that the combination of eliminative materialism and rights-based liberalism does not. That is to say, I think certain religious premises, and particularly the premises of classical theism, provide an explanation of what the moral law is, its sources and its requirements, and its relationship to the universe, to human consciousness and to the way we organize society that make much more internal sense than the various attempts to defend the claims of egalitarian liberalism based on Jerry Coyne’s strictly naturalist premises about the universe and human beings’ place in it.
I won’t defend this proposition at length here, except to say that if you readThomas Nagel’s critique of eliminative materialism and David Bentley Hart’s defense of classical theism back to back, you’ll get a pretty good sense of where I’m coming from. But I want to stress that I’m not saying that “coherence” is the same thing as “truth” (or, for that matter, the same thing as “answers all objections completely persuasively”), or that anyone who finds my critique of Coyne persuasive should rush to be received into their local branch of Christendom. The plausible intellectual connection between theism and a theory of inalienable human rights could be a spur to conversion in an individual case — as it was, for instance, for W.H. Auden, who found himselfimpelled back toward Christian belief in part by his reaction to the Nazis. But there are plenty of other moves one could make instead. Indeed, as I tried to stress both in my original column and the post replying to Coyne, I think there are many potentially coherent world-pictures — which means that there are various ways that modern secular progressives could make their principles make a little more sense without returning to their ancestors’ biblical faith.
Some of these paths to coherence are deistic, pantheistic, panentheistic — and some of them, yes, are atheistic or agnostic. They just aren’t atheistic in the particular style of the new-atheist crowd, with its peculiar mix of overconfident reductionism and crowing self-righteousness about morality and politics. Instead, the atheisms I have in mind are either more agnostic about the nature of human subjectivity and modern science’s ability to plumb its depths (like Nagel and some of the so-called New Mysterians), more skeptical about liberal humanism’s pieties (like that rampaging pessimist John Gray, or Matthew McConaughey’s eliminative-materialist policeman on H.B.O.’s new miniseries “True Detective”), or both.
When such atheists are liberal moralists, they’re usually open to grounding their moralism in theories about the cosmos (panpsychism, teleology in evolution, etc.) that today’s regnant naturalism disallows; when they’re strict materialists, they’re usually more inclined to the variations on stoicism, pessimism, epicureanism and ironism that seem to me to follow logically (to the extent that anything does) from that understanding of the world. And in neither case, crucially, are they inclined to lecture religious believers on our benighted, historically-foredoomed failure to embrace the synthesis of scientism and progressive moral certainty, because they see that synthesis’s problems just as clearly as we do.
*
Meanwhile, regarding Millman’s critique of what he calls the Straussian attitude toward the utility of religious belief, I think it’s useful to distinguish between two potential postures toward religion that a sympathetic skeptic might take. In the first case, the skeptic finds himself in possession of a deep-seated moral absolutism on certain questions that seems to only make sense in a divinely-ordered cosmos, yet remains otherwise intellectually unconvinced of the case that this divine ordering actually exists. Or, alternatively, she finds herself in need of a Higher Power or Purpose in her own life — like many people entering Alcoholics Anonymous, say — without necessarily being suddenly convinced that this Power is really out there. Such a person might then to decide to live as if a religious tradition is correct — to practice without assent, to speak the words without full belief. And this, I think, is perfectly defensible, because it basically represents a form of exploration, a way of testing (perhaps the only way of testing, depending on your ideas about religion) a proposition that you find doubtful but appealing, an attempt to gain knowledge that might help smooth out the contradictions in your understanding of the world. If someone in the midst of that kind of skepticism-infused experimentation were forced to suddenly elaborate a complete world-picture, they might end up sounding as incoherent as I think the new atheists often sound. But with this crucial difference: They would be aware of the tensions, aware of the difficulties, and accepting them as a hopefully-temporary part of a personal process, rather than claiming to have arrived at a permanent intellectual solution and proselytizing ardently on its behalf.
Which is, I think, where the second of attitude comes in, and why it’s so problematic. The “churchgoing skeptic,” as described above, is someone who embraces religion experimentally in the hopes of harmonizing his own contradictory instincts and beliefs. The “religion as a noble lie” attitude that Millman is critiquing, on the other hand, is all about other people: This kind of “pro-religion” skeptic is pretty confident that he knows the score, and he’s just worried about what might happen if everybody else knows it. So instead of conducting experiments to test his own beliefs and ideas, he’s demanding — or suggesting, quietly, to people in positions of influence — that the religious portion of society be encouraged to stop experimenting with theirs.
I don’t want to say that there’s always a bright line between “skeptical churchgoing” and the “noble lie” school of thought — one can attend mass exclusively pour encourager les autres, and (at a more subconscious level) one can want other people to remain religious so that one always has the option of making one’s own experiment in faith. (Garry Wills, in his post-Vatican II book, “Bare Ruined Choirs,” has some interesting things to say about philo-Catholics of this sort, who liked the air of timeless certainty around the pre-conciliar church precisely because they felt like it kept real religion going in case they ever wanted to dabble in it.)
But taken on its own, the “noble lie” attitude offers a form of support that actual believers should reject. Given non-religious premises, there are various defenses of this perspective that one can make, and the more Machiavellian ones — in which religion really is the opiate of the masses, and that’s a good thing, because popular piety preserves the skeptic’s own social position, intellectual freedom, etc. — have a certain grim consistency that’s lacking in the naively anti-religious sincerity of the new atheists. But believers should still prefer the thundering anathemas of Coyne and Co. to the subtleties of some of religion’s atheistic defenders: Better a sincere enemy, in the end, than a conscious liar who calls himself a friend.
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ABOUT ROSS DOUTHAT
Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. He is the author of “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class” (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review.
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Moral realism is pragmatism, not belief in a deity. The evolution of socialization and thus society is what brings about moral awareness and behavior. Belief in god and therefore in religion is really about social control and hierarchical power, influence and wealth.
It isn't as if religious moralism is superior in any way to social moralism. Indeed, religion is often the most rigid and inhumane in its dogma. Religion as a whole is largely out of step with social evolution and cultural reality. Religion simply fails to evolve.
Worse, belief in god and religious dogma often interfere with civil rights and personal freedom, which is why we have separation of church and state. Belief in god seems just as likely to result in morally reprehensible behavior as anything that comes from social moralism. In fact, the worse violence and human suffering is a result of religious hatreds among "religious" people.
So, really, belief in god isn't going to make things better. The evolution of cultural morality has been and will continue to be far more successful. Just look at who is most opposed to this evolution. They all believe in god.
Eclectic Pragmatist — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
I always find it interesting to read arguments for god from intelligent and educated people. This is the newest christian apologetics or theodicy. As in all such arguments there is a slight of hand, where magic happens while one is focussing elsewhere. The truth stated by Ross is that eliminative materialism cannot provide a coherent basis for morality, especially of the sort connected with universal justice and human rights. But, such lack of foundation cannot mean that an even less coherent concept of god--as has dominated the monotheistic traditions-- has any support or rationale. So, where does this lead us? Either a Nietszchean assertion that we don't need any foundations to live--- a kind of Nietzschean yes-saying and creative positing .... Or, we work more piecemeal... accepting that there is perhaps more to the world than understood within materialist philosophy, meditating on the nature consciousness, mindfulness, and meaning, expanding naturalism to include neurology and neurological plasticity, reflecting on evolutionary and psychological developmental factors connected with morality that may be built into us, or at least into our 'healthy' realization, and perhaps developing a moral phlosophy of 'care' or of 'virtues' grounded in such articulations of our nature, what contributes to our excellence and happiness, and so on.... All without any incoherent concept of god. But, ultimately always piecemeal and partial and tentative....
The argument that god is a necessary condition for human morality requires redaction of all biblical texts which do not conform to current cultural norms. The insertion of this human editorial process destroys the argument as it inserts human opinion into the chain as an improvement on god's intent. There would be less inconsistency if one built our current moral foundation on the revealed teachings of an anthology of Dilbert comic strips.
Mr. Douthat asks his readers to achieve his level of enlightenment by reading several supportive tomes. It would be more instructive if Mr. Douthat would himself read Patricia Churchland's "Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality". This book clearly documents the very current, admittedly early results of neurological research impacting moral behavior in humans as well as other organisms in the evolutionary tree. Very little is known in absolute terms at this time, but the direction is clear: in five or ten years, science will have a definitive understanding of the mechanisms by which we achieve morality.
I can only wonder what new front the theists will employ as they continue their tactical retreat.
The tight as a drum constructions that bring so much comfort to Ross aren't needed to bring coherence to most people, even in the largely rational world of science. A "coherent world-picture" is a product of radical rationalization as Ross demonstrates regularly.
"My argument is more limited: I’m proposing that a belief in God and a belief in moral realism — and, by extension, a belief in ideas like the rights-based liberalism on which our civilization is founded — form a coherent world-picture in a way that the combination of eliminative materialism and rights-based liberalism does not. "
Coherent by whose imagination? We get it. You require a belief in a god to make your vision coherent. The easter bunny and santa claus work for children to explain why easter eggs and presents magically appear at certain times of the year.
YOUR need for that belief, however, is proof of nothing, and certainly isn't proof of any deficiency in atheism.
"I won’t defend this proposition at length here,.."
Of course you won't. Every theist explanation for the universe and man's place in it ultimately hides the "truth" behind terms that range from unknowable to completely meaningless.
I've lost count of how many times you've written this same column with the same arguments. And while I can see how Coyne might be a convenient figure for you to attack, the fact that you think you can keep making these arguments endlessly without even attempting to justify why your worldview is any more complete, is telling. Your side has history, culture, and a leap of faith; that's it. It doesn't make you wrong, but it does make your confidence just as ridiculous as Coyne's.
My question is this. If indisputable evidence was to be discovered that the Bible (new and old testaments) was purely a work of fiction / a set of parables authored by humankind - would that suddenly devalue the ethical system as revealed in the teachings of Jesus Christ to Ross Douthat and all who agree that Ross' world view is optimal? Would that instantly transform the Christian world view into something that was "incoherent"?
The discussion of whether God exists needs to change to a discussion of the nature of God. Does God perform miracles that contravene the laws of physics? Does God answer prayers? Does God reward good and punish evil? It the answer to all these questions is no, then belief in God has no practical effect different from non-belief in God.
Yes, miracles exist -- and professional magicians perform them on stage all the time. What professional magicians do is inexplicable to others, but they lay no claim to divine powers. So theinexplicable is not a proof of the existence of a god of miracles.
Pray tell us, Mr. Douthat, about God. Tell us who "God" is. Tell us what God wants us to do or not to do. And tell us what God does and doesn't do. Is God partial to certain prayers? Does God prefer the Christians and just tolerate the Hindus? If so, what happens to the billions of Hindus when they die? What will happen to all of us? Is God male? And what does "believing in God" mean?
Ross, I can't help wondering if my reaction to this discussion would be of interest to you. A little background first.
I was raised a Catholic - religious family, Catholic school, the whole bit - and I was a very serious believer. Until I became an adult. And then it just all fell away from me. I realized, with the adult version of my brain, that the whole 'big picture' I'd been taught made no sense to me. I did not believe it, could not believe it, and didn't want to believe it because I realized that its 'falling away' was like a breath of fresh air for me.
But I think anyone who knows me would say that I was a good person - not the best, not perfect, but on the whole a good, moral person. I've raised three children, nonbelievers all, who, I'm sure, would be described the same way.
Now for my reason for writing: I wonder if you can possibly understand how completely unnecessary the discussion you're describing seems to me? I'll admit I only skimmed much of the material. To me, it's just not worth my time. It's not relevant to my approach to life.
Now I would never make pejorative comments about your beliefs as Coyne did. I have no interest in changing your thinking on the subject as long as it doesn't in any way impinge on mine. But it seems to me that you find people like me troubling. And I just don't get that.
"My argument is more limited: I’m proposing that a belief in God and a belief in moral realism — and, by extension, a belief in ideas like the rights-based liberalism on which our civilization is founded — form a coherent world-picture in a way that the combination of eliminative materialism and rights-based liberalism does not."
Even if true, this would be irrelevant as to whether or not a deity actually exists, so I'm not sure as to the point of this argument.
Mr. Douthat more clearly restricts his argument to a certain kind of atheist than he did in the Jerry Coyne piece. His point isn't that atheism is demonstrably wrong-headed, but that certain atheists are too narrowly partisan. I agree with him about the "noble lie" reason for supporting religion, but on the broader issue of whether religion is plausible, he gives away the store: "But I want to stress that I’m not saying that “coherence” is the same thing as “truth” (or, for that matter, the same thing as “answers all objections completely persuasively”), or that anyone who finds my critique of Coyne persuasive should rush to be received into their local branch of Christendom." In doing so, he also seems to imply that the only legitimate religion is Christianity--a view point I hope he deals with in another blog.
A "new atheist," I take it, is one who believes that there is no God, that eliminative materialism is true, and that there is a universal egalitarian morality. This is the culprit Mr. Douthat is attempting to expose as hypocritical. I'm an atheist but not a "new" one on that definition. I believe that there is no God and that eliminative materialism is true, but I do not believe in morality as conceived by people like Mr. Douthat, Thomas Nagel, and Immanuel Kant.
Nagel's attack on eliminative materialism is an attack on a view that virtually no current eliminative materialist holds. Current eliminativists do not attempt to eliminate consciousness but to account for it as a function of "matter." To use Nagel's famous phrase, consciousness is "what it is like" to be a material state. It is not like something to be a rock, but it is like something to be a bat. Rocks don't have nervous systems; bats and cats do. It is something else to be like a human, because we have different types of nervous systems.
Are we all equal in some moral sense? It is hard to see how without appealing to some premise that is obviously false. But this does not leave us with no way of taking each other seriously. After all, what it is like to be a human includes the various ways we care. If caring is not enough, then how would religion or morality fill the void?
Thanks to the Times and Mr. Douthat for this kind of exchange. It is good for our democracy.
Serban asks, " Even if you believe in God assume for a minute that there is no such entity. Does that change how much you really understand about the world? Does it have to change your behavior (other than no longer praying)?"
Yes, lack of a belief in God does affect my world view and behavior. In fact, I tried this experiment for a large portion of my adult life, with rather unpleasant consequences. Of course, this is only my experience, but that does not make it less valid.
Well, at least he's not overtly ranting about the sex lives of others in this one...
Belief in God may or may not be necessary to lead a moral life, but humility certainly is, so much so that I believe that the lack of a genuine and abiding humility -- whether in a believer or atheist -- causes more despair and destruction than any belief system.
Philosophical reflections such as this are the stuff of arm-chair theology, and as such have very little to do with how most people go about their daily lives. Most of us are much to busy trying to make livings and raise families or create something satisfying to wonder about ultimate goals; ordinary existence imposes purpose on us whether we want it or not.
There is also a very simple explanation for the vociferous and somewhat abrasive tone of the "new atheists". (Among them, Richard Dawkins is at his best when explaining the basis of the scientific world-view, as in "The Blind Watchmaker" and not so good when constructing polemics.) The adherents of an anti-intellectual, almost preliterate brand of "old-time" religion attempt by hook or crook (mostly by crook) to impose the consequences of their medieval beliefs on those who do not share them. By means of capturing and using the powers of the state theocracy and its logical end, inquisition, becomes a real possibility. i feel that this is what so agitates Dawkins, Harris, etc. Until such time as Douthat and his ilk speak out against the perversion of their relatively benign faith into an instrument of coercion (e.g. execution for gays in Africa) and its companion hypocrisy, I will find his musings, however elegant and thoughtful, quite irrelevant.
This column makes me really really miss Christopher Hitchens.
@Concerned MD,
I was thinking this very thought at the moment I read your comment. How he could lay waste to tedious, pedantic thinkers. I miss him every day.
Ross,
When you say god exists, does that include Zeuss, Hera, and the the rest of the gang?
As usual Douthat uses way way too many words to try, (vainly I might add) to convince the reader that humans are not able to be ethical unless they also believe in an unproven fantasy .
The connection between religious beliefs and ethics is grossly overstated. Ethical considerations and the desire to do what is good and decent, I believe, are hard-wired into human beings, no matter whether they are Muslims, Christians, or unbelievers. We have seen many so-called religious leaders that are unbelievably morally corrupt and we have also encountered many self-proclaimed atheists that are not only generous, but ethically and morally sound.
The fact of the matter is that our religious belief or lack of it is virtually a function of our background. If you were born in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia to a Taliban chief or Saudi prince, in almost all cases you will profess to be religious, not just religious, but religious in the Islamic sense. And if you were born to the Prince of Wales at the Windsor Castle, I suppose you will grow up to be an Anglican. Nobody knows what is "true" or "false" about any of the dozens of faiths people of the world are daily dying, destroying, and killing for.
We are having this argument even now precisely because nobody knows the real truth. Can you have a debate about the speed of light?
OK getting that comment to fit into 1500 characters including spaces was unduly hard work. I hope it still makes sense. Constraints are all to the good, but I wish I'd had room to retain my comparison with Andrew Sullivan: here at least you're more philosophically coherent. Also, I want to make clear that I cite my own background - as should be obvious when I refer to my personal experience of losing any possibility of faith - I do so to emphasize our differences, not to trumpet my expertise. Thank you.
No world view is coherent if it clashes with scientific facts such as the reality that nature has no personality and does not respond to any human pleas.
Modern philosophers who understand this see ethics as an evolved behavior in a social animal. There is no need to invoke a God to explain what is intrinsic to healthy human beings.
Unfortunately, "Because God says so" is a tautology that destroys logic and blocks negotiation in most dysfunctional societies, and it rests on the specious notion that there is a personage named God who alters the course of nature for people.
This is why modern atheists will not accept politics that argues for policies that are purported to affect what God does to humans.
Though I often disagree with you, I admire your writing about religion. For my Ph.D. in Religion at Princeton, I concentrated in New Testament, early Judaism, Christian origins and patristics; my diss. was on Jerome. Subsequently, teaching New Testament introduction for years made me a convinced atheist. That evolution just happened, without apparent rational basis. I was left with two intuitive convictions: Christianity must be false; only materialism is a plausible world-view. But philosophical grounding for these beliefs is far to seek. All the while, my sympathy & understanding deepened, not only for early Christian thought, but for contemporary Protestant and Catholic teaching.
I much appreciate the sophistication & sensitivity of your writing on religion. This column's affirmation of "multiple coherent world pictures" - & its rejection of "the synthesis of scientism and progressive moral certainty" as one of them - & its valuing of living as if in faith as a mode of philosophical experimentation - particularly impress. Your sympathy for complex, partial, doubting, yet sincere approaches to traditional religion points to a genuinely modern Christianity: one founded, as Paul might have wished, on reason, humility, & doubt (values the Fathers, too, held dear). Your rejection of philosophically crude contemporary atheisms reassures this atheist, by holding out hope for better atheism.
The World is not coherent; even God suffers from cognitive dissonance!!
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