Erudite critic takes on new atheists

 
A column in yesterday's Toronto Star criticized the position of the so-called "New Atheists" [Erudite critic takes on new atheists]. The column was written by Stephen Scharper who frequently writes columns about religion. Scharper was formerly at St. Michael's College (Roman Catholic) in the University of Toronto where he was a Professor in the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion. He is currently a Professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus but he maintains a cross-appointment to the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion.

Scharper's opinion piece begins with what, by now, is becoming a familiar complaint.

A couple of years ago, I was on a televised panel with a man who claimed that religions were to blame for most of the death and destruction throughout history, and that, by extension, religious people were more inherently violent than secular folks.

The implication of his claim was that discrimination against religious adherents would not only be acceptable, but advisable in such matters as job hiring, policy formation, and policing.

Prejudice against people of faith was subtly being proclaimed as an inherent good.

That panelist's view, extreme as it appears, may have some powerful mainstream resonance in a spate of recent publications from the so-called "new atheists."

I don't agree with the extreme view pictured by Stephen Scharper and neither do most atheists. It is simply not true that religious people are inherently more violent than atheists. On the other hand, it is simply not true that believers are more moral than non-believers.

People who believe in supernatural beings are fond of making the association between their belief and superior moral behavior. They often imply—or even state overtly—that atheists must be immoral because they don't believe in God. Many of the "New Atheists" (Scharper mentions Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) have pointed out that those claims are not supported by evidence. That's the main point. The "New Atheist" stance is a response to centuries of false propaganda and hypocrisy on the part of believers.

Religious apologists need to stop whining about this counter-offensive and start recognizing that their claims of moral superiority just don't measure up. While it would be wrong to deny someone a job just because they falsely claim to be morally superior, it would also be wrong to give them a job just because they say they are morally superior.

Scharper goes on to praise a recent book by John Haught (God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response To Dawkins, Harris And Hitchens). I haven't read this book but from what Scharper says it sounds like the same-old, same-old that we've heard dozens of time before [e.g. Alister McGrath's Defense of Religion, Propaganda Techniques: Shift the Burden of Proof, Alister McGrath].

Here's how Scharper describes it.

Haught, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, adroitly distills the common themes from this troika [Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens], which suggests that outside of nature, "there is no God, no soul, and no life beyond death," that the universe has no overarching purpose, that all life developments can be explained by science, and that faith in God is the source of countless evils and should thus be jettisoned on moral grounds.

What Haught finds ironic is that the new atheists have little interest in atheism at all, and don't engage in the main philosophical debates raised by atheistic giants such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Instead, they base their notion of religion on the creationism of a select band of fundamentalists. In short, they adopt a theologically bereft caricature of religion.

Now, let's be absolutely clear about this argument. It is completely bogus. This is not a debate about religion, it's a debate about the existence of supernatural beings. Atheists are simply not interested in debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They want to debate the evidence for angels. Atheists don't want to debate why God and evil can coexist. They want to debate whether God exists at all. We don't care about the extensive literature on the interpretation of Chapters 1 & 2 of Genesis. It's irrelevant.

We don't need to read up on transubstantiation because we're challenging the divinity of Jesus and not whether wine and bread can turn into blood and flesh. We atheists don't care about the "sophistication" of religious apologetics. (Just as Roman Catholics don't care about ancient Greek texts on how to interpret the Oracle at Delphi or Roman treatises on the entrails of chickens.)

We know that every large religion has tons of literature justifying their particular beliefs. This was as true of the ancient Greek and Roman religions as it is of the modern religions such as Hinduism, Islam, and Taoism. You do not need to be an expert in all the sophisticated delusions in order to question the fundamental issue—do supernatural beings exist?

The form of argument that Haught advances, and Scharper supports, has been called The Courtier's Reply by PZ Myers [see The Emperor's New Clothes and the Courtier's Reply for an explanation]. This needs to be widely known so I'm going to quote PZ once again in case some of the Sandwalk readers are unfamiliar with his response. Here's how PZ describes the Courtier's Reply to the revelation that the Emperor has no clothes.

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic leathers of the Emperor's boots, nor does he give a moment's consideration to Bellini's masterwork, On the Luminescence of the Emperor's Feathered Hat. We have entire schools dedicated to writing learned treatises on the beauty of the Emperor's raiment, and every major newspaper runs a section dedicated to imperial fashion; Dawkins cavalierly dismisses them all. He even laughs at the highly popular and most persuasive arguments of his fellow countryman, Lord D. T. Mawkscribbler, who famously pointed out that the Emperor would not wear common cotton, nor uncomfortable polyester, but must, I say must, wear undergarments of the finest silk.

Dawkins arrogantly ignores all these deep philosophical ponderings to crudely accuse the Emperor of nudity.

Personally, I suspect that perhaps the Emperor might not be fully clothed — how else to explain the apparent sloth of the staff at the palace laundry — but, well, everyone else does seem to go on about his clothes, and this Dawkins fellow is such a rude upstart who lacks the wit of my elegant circumlocutions, that, while unable to deal with the substance of his accusations, I should at least chide him for his very bad form.

Until Dawkins has trained in the shops of Paris and Milan, until he has learned to tell the difference between a ruffled flounce and a puffy pantaloon, we should all pretend he has not spoken out against the Emperor's taste. His training in biology may give him the ability to recognize dangling genitalia when he sees it, but it has not taught him the proper appreciation of Imaginary Fabrics.

Here's my challenge to Stephen Scharper: if you know of a sophisticated argument for the existence of God that hasn't already been addressed, and refuted, by atheists, then here's your chance to present it. I notice that you didn't mention it in your column and none of your colleagues have actually presented one of those secret theological debating points that you claim exist in the corridors of seminaries and departments of philosophy or religion.

I'm sick and tied of hearing apologists make false claims about the existence of some sort of deal-breaking point that the "New Atheists" have overlooked because they are addressing a kindergarten version of religion. As far as I'm concerned the rationality behind belief in supernatural beings is kindergarten philosophy. If Professor Scharper disagrees, then lets hear about the killer evidence for God that atheists don't know about because we haven't studied theology.

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[Photo Credit: The photograph of Professor Stephen Scharper is from the University of Toronto News]