One of the jobs that we have as students of philosophy is on occasion to wade into wider cultural discourse and debates, and see what we can add, clarify, or correct. Background in the big, traditional issues in philosophy of religion puts us in a particularly good position to evaluate the claims of the so-called "New Atheist" movement, which has been promulgated most famously by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. In honor (if that's the right phrase) of the announcement about his failing health, I have selected Christopher Hitchens' _God Is Not Great_ for our scrutiny.
Of course this is a popular work, not a work of technical philosophy. But there are philosophical arguments here--and propositions that purport to be true--even if we sometimes have to see through Hitchens' rhetorical flair to discern them. So, here's the question: What are some of these arguments? Are they strong? Do they work? Which ones do, and which ones don't? For an informed student of philosophy of religion, is there anything new here? Does this book--and "New Atheism" in general--deserve the attention it has received?
I don't think Hitchens's arguments and views are anything that hasn't already been covered by someone before him. And I definitely think that his arguments are slightly one-sided and biased. But damn he has a lot of disdain for all things religious and I completely respect his passion and vigor. As a side note though, if he is trying to persuade theists that religion poisons everything, his approach is probably fairly ineffective.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Gab! This is certainly nothing new. But I think the problem and reason for the hostility and resentment in atheists such as Hitchens lies in the fact that no matter how valid or convincing the atheist's argument may be it will not change a believer or deter them from their beliefs just based on the fact that their belief is based on faith. So as far as being witty, one-sided, extreme, and persuasive, I think his tactics only get places with people who are already non-believers. So where does this leave us?
ReplyDeleteGood call, Alanna! I think the only way for theists and atheists to reconcile is to call a truce, so to speak. They need to agree to disagree, essentially, because neither side is going to falter. Though I feel that atheists are probably more willing to let the believers think what they will. After all, the believers' strange attachment to religion is what moves them through life. Who are we to try to take that away from them, regardless of how silly of a vice it is?
ReplyDeleteTouche, Gab. Is it possible though that Hitchens and other atheists have a similar attachment or shall I say, obsession with religion despite their hatred towards it? Why does Hitchens feel the need to justify his non-belief and tear down people's faith? Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteMarx wrote famously, "Religion is an opiate for the masses." I guess this is only a problem for people who are offended by the use of opiates. I'm not one of those people, so I don't care about religion either. It's like this: if a person gets high and drives a truck into a little kid, I care. If a person straps a bomb to their chest and walks into a restaraunt shouting some prayer, I care. But I don't blame the drug for the accident, I blame the person. Hitchens wants things to be as black-and-white as religion poisons everything, the same way that our own government wants you to believe that the only people who do drugs are losers and wastrels. I don't like being manipulated.
ReplyDeleteInteresting insight Eddie. I am actually one of those people offended by the use of opiates, what a surprise. Are you saying then, that if we didn't have religion people would still be doing the messed up stuff they do - i.e. strapping bombs to their chests and walking into a restaurant shouting whatever? You don't think that the idea of religion, having to adhere to rules, being afraid of ruining your chances for an ideal afterlife, sinning against god, etc. makes people do radical things? It seems that the problem of religious diversity pops its little head up again, because religion is what causes a LOT of intolerance. I find it hard to blame that many individuals rather than the one thing they share in common - religion.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting is that I've never heard of radical atheists getting together and killing a bunch of religious people for being religious. Just a thought. Lol.
I think that people are going to be crazy whether religion is a factor or not. Would there be less war and violence if religion was a non-issue? Maybe, but I'm sure we'd find something else to fight about. Total agreement and peace concerning the problem of religious diversity is an obvious goal but I'm beginning to think it's also inconceivable. People of different religious beliefs are clearly never going to see eye-to-eye.
ReplyDeleteTo reply to the original post...
ReplyDeleteI'd say perhaps that the movement itself is just as valid as any other modern religious movement that puts out books for popular consumption. I really just see it as a passing fad...another "Dao of Pooh".
I don't really think it offered anything new to the philosophical community either. Nietzsche made many of the same arguments, only he constructed them better and used fewer inflated examples.
I think Eddie makes a really good point. It is really too simplistic to blame religion for a person's actions.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think that maybe some people would have still done the crazy things they did if they never had any religious motivation.
But I also wonder whether there are certain mindsets that some ideologies (religious, political, social) that just repress or manipulate to the point where they can get some people to do just about anything.
I have to say that Hitchens is way off base in a lot of his arguments; although I may disagree with a lot of the arguments, Hitchens still brings up some valid questions worth exploring. I think it would be safe to say that Hitchens is trying to use his rationale to explain why God doesn't exist. It's pretty hard to explain faith on rational terms, don't you think? I mean faith defies all logic and rationality. I will leave you with Kierkegaards' take on this particular matter of faith. He says, and I will paraphrase: Incomplete knowledge is not sufficient for faith, one must believe by virtue of the absurd, that is to say because something is a contradiction.
ReplyDeleteTo Warren's comment -
ReplyDeleteThis is what Camus has to say about Kierkegaard's leap of faith:
"Sure of being unable to escape the irrational, he wants at least to save himself from that desperate nostalgia that seems to him sterile and devoid of implication. […] The important thing, as Abbe Galiani said to Mme d’Epinay, is not to be cured, but to live with one’s ailments. Kierkegaard wants to be cured. […] The entire effort of his intelligence is to escape the antimony of the human condition.” "
I thought that was pretty epic.
In reply to Warren's comment...
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I think it's probably just as hard to rationally prove gods existence as it is to prove his non-existence but I am cautious around notions like "faith" because it just seems counter to nature to me. Our reason is what makes us human, how can we accept something like faith, which is necessarily contrary to reason?
It's impossible to prove anything relating to God, because of his illusive nature, and I think maybe that was the point. Whoever came up with the whole thing appears to have been a genius. Since nothing can be proven, people can believe as they wish without ever REALLY being told they're wrong.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Caroline makes a good connection in suggesting that Nietzsche may have presented similar arguments long before Hitchens. I hadn't even put that together; could've made for an interesting essay or something.
To Caroline's last comment...
ReplyDeleteI'm not certain that "reason" is what makes us human. For one, it has obvious shortcomings in daily life. For example, we now know that conscious thought is one of the last things to come to the table in decision-making, usually after around 30 seconds or so if I recall correctly. What "separates" us from the animal kingdom might be reason, but fundamentally we're still animals. On these grounds, I argue reason and faith are really what make us human.
In response to both Eddie and Carolines comment....
ReplyDeleteI agree on your idea that what makes us human is not that we are strictly rational beings, although, I am not sure that reason and faith are what makes us human, rather, our mere ability to utilize and engage in such abstract modes of thinking. It is not reason and faith alone that give us such a unique distinction from other animals, instead it is our ability to conceive of notions such as belief* and even further, use belief as moral guideline to which we live our lives.
It does not make someone un-human if they have faith or have beliefs.
One of the major problems I have with this book as a so-called "work of philosophy" is its scattershot approach to dealing with religion. Like I'm reading his arguments against creationism in Chapter 6, and he goes on for several pages making a point that I've already heard before and didn't convince me then. This is the same critique I made of Aquinas when we read him: you don't win an argument by giving a list of reasons, in case one fails, but by coming up with one REALLY good reason. Quality over quantity, Hitchens!
ReplyDeleteIn reponse to Caroline's comment on DEC 20th at 7:01pm
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with you Caroline that reason does make us Human; most importantly, one can't dismiss that there are a lot of other aspects that make us human. I think the most important of these are our emotions which are not rational or logical but more instincual. Humans don't rationalize an emotion and then choose to feel, they just feel it because of some outside force proking it. Just like humans don't ratioanlize GOD and then choose to believe. Now moving on to the point, Faith is Faith simply because it doesn't appeal to rationale. If it faith were to be an eqaution in which 1+1= GOD/Maker or what have you, then obviously there would be no need for faith, it simply wouldn't exist. Please respond!!
Something intresting Caroline might find about Kierkegaard and what he believed-----
ReplyDeleteFaith is not a decision based on evidence that, say, certain beliefs about God are true or a certain person is worthy of love. No such evidence could ever be enough to pragmatically justify the kind of total commitment involved in true religious faith or romantic love. Faith involves making that commitment anyway. Kierkegaard thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt one's beliefs about God; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought involved in weighing evidence, without which the faith would have no real substance. Someone who does not realize that Christian doctrine is inherently doubtful and that there can be no objective certainty about its truth does not have faith but is merely credulous. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God. As Kierkegaard writes, "doubt is conquered by faith, just as it is faith which has brought doubt into the world"
Overall I think Hitchens has some valid points, and some worth exploring further. On the contrary, he offers very bias points towards Christianity and relentlessly assaults its foundation. I do think that Christianity has been warped over the years, and has many many flaws, I just think that Hitchens goes about all the wrong way.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of Warren's Kierkegaard spiel, I would say that a good way to differentiate between a knight-of-faith and an uninformed nudnik is the live option as discussed in James. The nudnik never consciously embraces faith, either is never given the live option or else never really makes a choice. By contrast, faith itself is a cultivation, a very active choice on the part of the will. This book doesn't differentiate between these two understanding of the religious individual as Kierkegaard did.
ReplyDeleteSince it seems that we are not huge fans of Hitchens here, I want to point out an argument, or observation* rather that he posed in Chapter six that I admired (or, more so, I have never seen it interpreted this way).
ReplyDeleteHitchens, when talking about the development of Abrahamic traditions, points out that the main objective was to make the masses feel like low negligible sinners that cannot amount to any thing beyond that, In yet, at the same time provide for them a "number one fan" so to speak, a creator who cares for them and believes in them, and gives them self-importance.
I thought that this was an interesting way to look at the development of Abrahamic traditions, and i also wanted to shine a little more light Hitchens way...it seems the majority of us dislike his style!...
As for the early comments on Hitchens abrasive approach to discussing atheism....
ReplyDeletei am not sure there is any other way to go about it-- Just as atheism's polar (organized religion) is equally as extreme and abrasive, it is necessary to have people such as Hitches and Dawkins who are just as abrasive on the other side. There is no "nice" way, so to speak, to go about convincing one to be atheist (indeed, that is what his book is after).
I think the issue is that we are so used to "respecting" religion, so as to not "hurt anyones feelings," but at the same time, i am not sure why atheism shouldn't deserve the same respect, even in its radical doubt. They are both beliefs, are they not? As for his arguments "having been talked about before," well clearly...his ideas are not new by any means, rather, this book was a means to deliver an accessible atheist source to the masses, more so than to come up with ground-breaking ideas.
Well Gabrielle I do agree atheism does deserve the same respect as other beliefs, but you can't expect this belief not to get some sort of negative critic. Also the same could be said to Hitchens about giving respect because he does attack God/Christianity in a very abrasive way.
ReplyDeleteOh I forgot one more thing, you might want to research Hitchens more if you sympathize with him. I found so may articles debunking him even from fellow atheist.
ReplyDeleteThis has been fun we should keep it going even though we aren't in class.
ReplyDeleteI certainly understand that Hitchens is no anyones favorite, I myself am not a fan of his corrosive approach and passive aggressive sarcasm.. I am merely saying that I think it is necessary to have at least one figure such as himself representing the atheist community and that it is necessary to have someone to stand as a polarity to the common apologists that seem to "beat around the bush," so to speak.
ReplyDeleteBut atheists, also, I think are to afraid to own up to "what they really want to say," at often times sugar coating their ideas for accessibility. It is not going to be easy, obviously, for a nation so greatly dominated by religious ideals, to hear the things that atheists have to say. I suppose what i mean is...Hitchens speaks his mind without censorship, and I think that alone is admirable. Whether or not it sets the atheist community back further into their stereotypes, I am not sure...
Also, here is an example I can think of (ironic that this is the one that I compare it with, I know)....
ReplyDeleteMalcolm X is often known for his abrasive tactics in the civil rights movement, often making claims that if violence need to be taken, indeed they would be taken
MLK can be looked at as the sort of "friendly atheist," "religious apologetic" type, advocating peace and non-violence resistance.
*(although, some argue that this was not a threat, and that the american community manipulated his ideas on violence to make him seem as a largely threatening political figure. Really Malcolm was simply stating, that if there was violence threatening the black community that they would "fight back," and not "turn the other cheek" like MLK suggested) .....
My point is: Many argue that without these two polar opposite forces in the civil rights movement the black community would not have been awarded their civil rights. It was necessary to have these two radical opposites fighting for the same cause to help the cause of civil rights "balance" so to speak.
I think in this case, Hitchens is a sort of "Malcolm X" of the atheist community, and that is why i think his approach is necessary (though I myself sometimes find it hard to chew, as i too feel about Malcolm)
I agree with Gabby from her previous post about censorship and Hitchens. Hitchens takes an extremist postition, but I don't think that we should necessarily be so critical towards the way he poses his arguments and his writing tactics. As Gabby also mentions with the Malcolm X example, it is sometimes necessary to take extreme measures and an extreme standpoint to be heard. The aethist seems to get trampled on in our society. Maybe it's time for someone, like Hitchens, to make a point... even if it is in a loud fashion.
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