Is It Impossible to Prove Atheism?

(Originally published on 1 September 2023; revised version published on 7 September 2023; revised again on 10 September 2023.)

1: Introduction

“Performative" or "pragmatic inconsistency arguments” attempt to show that some action with respect to some proposition is inconsistent with the proposition. You will sometimes hear people call such propositions “self-defeating,” but that isn’t technically accurate. It isn’t the proposition itself which is self-defeating; it is taking some action with respect to the proposition -- like asserting, believing, or defending it – which is self-defeating. For example, consider the proposition, “It is impossible to know anything.” It is logically possible that the proposition is true, but it is logically inconsistent to know that proposition is true. If you somehow knew that it was true, then you would know that it is false. That’s an example of a performative or pragmatic inconsistency argument.

Here are some other examples of propositions which lend themselves nicely to performative or pragmatic inconsistency arguments:

• "I do not exist."
• "I am dead."
• "I cannot assert or communicate anything."
• "I cannot talk."
• "I don't intend to be understood at all."

All of the above examples involve a first-person ("I") statement, but I'm not sure if a performative or pragmatic inconsistency must be a first-person statement. I'll leave that aside.

2: Exposition

Does atheism involve a pragmatic inconsistency? Before I can discuss this, I first need to define my terms. The word "atheism" is polysemous: it has multiple legitimate meanings. By "metaphysical atheism," I mean the proposition, "God does not exist." By "psychological atheism," I mean the psychological state in which a person lacks the belief that God exists. This post is about metaphysical, not psychological, atheism. For brevity, in the remainder of the post, I will use "atheism" to mean only metaphysical atheism.

According to some thinkers, the action of asserting the truth of atheism is a pragmatic inconsistency. For example, the late Christian philosopher Greg Bahnsen once said:

It's standard fare these days to point out that a universal negative cannot  be proven in an a posteriori fashion.  On the basis of experience, how could I prove universally there is no God? [...] God might be on the back side of the fourth moon of Jupiter.  Since I haven't examined the back side of the fourth moon of Jupiter, it's at least possible that God exists and I haven't encountered him yet.  So to say that there is no God is a very strong claim.  Atheists usually get hammered about that, that they're claiming too much.  In fact, in order to say 'there is no God,' ... you would have to be omniscient.  But if you were omniscient, you would be God. Therefore, the only person who could say 'there is no God' is God.  God  would not deny Himself.  So no one can say there is no God.[1]

This suggests the following argument, which I call the "unprovability of universal negatives argument."

(1) The only way to prove a universal negative in an a posteriori fashion is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of a thing and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore:

(3) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove a universal negative in an a posteriori fashion.

Defenders of the "unprovability of atheism argument" add two additional steps:

(4) The proposition, "God does not exist," is a universal negative.

From (3) and (4), it follows that:

(5) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove, "God does not exist," in an a posteriori fashion.

In the passage quoted above, however, Bahnsen suggests another argument which adds onto the first five steps. Atheism entails that there is no God, but the action of claiming to know that atheism is true presupposes that the person making that assertion has God-like knowledge. So we have:

(6) The action of claiming to know, "God does not exist," presupposes that the speaker is God. 

From (5) and (6), it follows that:

(7) If a finite, moral being claims to know, "God does not exist," then it is true that God does not exist and it is false that God does not exist.

From (7) and the Law of Noncontradiction, it follows that: 

(8) Any claims made by a finite, mortal being to know, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis should not be accepted.

I shall call the inference from (5) - (7) the "pragmatic inconsistency of knowing atheism" argument.  

3: Assessment

I shall argue that both the unprovability of atheism argument and the related pragmatic inconsistency of atheism arguments are unsound.

3.1: The Unprovability of Atheism Argument

Here, again, is the unprovability of atheism argument.

(3) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove a universal negative in an a posteriori fashion.

(4) The proposition, "God does not exist," is a universal negative.

Therefore:

(5) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove, "God does not exist," in an a posteriori fashion.

One immediate problem with this argument is its name. From the fact, if it is a fact, that it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove atheism in an a posteriori fashion, it does not follow that it is impossible for such beings to prove atheism in a priori fashion. One or more internal inconsistency arguments against God's existence might be sound. But let that pass.

Some philosophers deny the truth of the second premise, (4). For example, in his famous debate with Frank Zindler, William Lane Craig argued as follows.

[...] the statement that God does not exist is not a universal negative; it’s a singular negative statement. Certainly you can prove negative singular statements such as there is no planet between Venus and the Earth. You could provide arguments to show that a singular negative statement is true [...].[2]

Strictly speaking, the first quoted sentence is correct. Categorical propositions are propositions which assert or deny relationships between classes; universal negatives are categorical propositions which have the form, "No S are P." Atheism is not a universal negative in this strict sense. But the statement, "God does not exist," is the same as saying, "No (existing) thing is God." That restatement of atheism is a universal generalization; it is has the form, "There are no S's."[3] Therefore, a proponent of the unprovability of atheism argument might replace "universal negative" with "universal generalization" yielding the following revised version of the "unprovability of universal negatives argument," which gets renamed as the "unprovability of universal generalizations argument."

(1') The only way to prove a universal generalization in an a posteriori fashion is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of a thing and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore:

(3') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove a universal generalization in an a posteriori fashion.

The "unprovability of atheism argument" would then become:

(4') The proposition, "God does not exist," is a universal generalization.

Therefore:

(5) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to prove, "God does not exist," in an a posteriori fashion.

The meaning of the word "prove" is ambiguous, but the last two steps of the pragmatic inconsistency argument (steps 6 and 7) provide a clue. That argument targets not atheism, but what is sometimes called "gnostic atheism," the claim to know that God does not exist. This suggests that, at least for Bahnsen, to "prove" a universal generalization means to succeed in demonstrating that belief in the universal generalization can rise to the level of knowledge. So let's revise the first two arguments one more time.

The "unprovability of universal generalizations argument" gets renamed as the "unknowability of universal generalizations argument."

(1'') The only way to reasonably believe a negative universal generalization on an a posteriori basis is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of a thing and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore:

(3'') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe a negative universal generalization in an a posteriori fashion.

Likewise, the "unprovability of atheism argument" becomes the "unknowability of atheism argument."

(4') The proposition, "God does not exist," is a negative universal generalization.

Therefore:

(5') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis.

Now consider the first two premises (steps 1'' and 2) in light of this clarification of "prove." 

The second premise (step 2) is false. Purely on the basis of experience, one can know that at least some negative universal generalizations are true. Some objects or beings are defined in such a way that, if they exist, they exist at a specific location and at a specific time. For example, consider the title, "Seattle Seahawks Superbowl 60 Most Valuable Player (MVP)." Let "NO SEAHAWKS MVP" refer to the negative universal generalization, "The Seattle Seahawks Superbowl 60 MVP does not exist." If the Seattle Seahawks do not advance to Superbowl 60 (or if they advance but do not win), then NO SEAHAWKS MVP is true: the person described by that title does not exist. In that case, an "exhaustive search" doesn't require superhuman or supernatural abilities. One could reasonably believe NO SEAHAWKS MVP by simply watching Superbowl 60 or reading about it after the fact.

One might object that, even in my highly specified example, the inference to NO SEAHAWKS MVP isn't deductively valid; it is at least possible that there is a global media conspiracy to spread misinformation about the outcome of Superbowl 60, one's sensory organs are defective, or one is literally delusional and imagining sense data not received by one's sensory organs. This objection fails because one does not need absolute certainty to be reasonable in holding a belief. Even if one did not know NO SEAHAWKS MVP, one would still be reasonable in believing NO SEAHAWKS MVP. Contrary to what Bahnsen implies, a person can reasonably believe something they don't claim to know. For the same reason, Bahnsen has not given us a good reason to believe that the first premise (step 1'') is true. 

A proponent of the unknowability of atheism argument might grant the above objections and concede that humans can reasonably believe at least some negative universal generalizations, while at the same time insist that there is something special about God such that humans cannot reasonably believe atheism. Here I think it is useful to follow Jeanine Diller in making a distinction between global and local versions of atheism.[4] "Global atheism" is the proposition, "God does not exist," for all concepts of God, including concepts of God which no one has yet even considered. In contrast, "local atheism" is the proposition, "God does not exist," for a specific concept of God. This distinction suggests two further versions of the "unknowability of atheism" argument.

I will call the first of these two versions the "unknowability of global atheism" argument.

(1*) The only way to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of God, for every possible concept of God, and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore: 

(5*) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis.

The second version, of course, is the "unknowability of local atheism" argument.

(1**) The only way to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis is to exhaustively search for all possible sources of evidence of God, for a single concept of God, and find no evidence.

(2) But it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to conduct such a search.

Therefore: 

(5**) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis.

The first argument is, I believe, much more promising than the second. In light of the fact that there are surely legitimate concepts of "God" which no human has ever conceived, it is difficult to imagine how, on the basis of experience, one could be confident in the belief that all local theisms are false. In other words, in the context of global atheism, the second premise (step 2) seems to be true. Of course, the fact that I cannot conceive of such a justification does not rule out the possibility that one exists. But it seems unlikely that anyone in the year 2023 could reasonably believe global atheism is true. As John Schellenberg has persuasively argued, there are numerous signs of 

human intellectual immaturity at the macro level, and we've seen enough evidence of it to say that maturity--the realization (or near realization) of a deep and wide understanding of reality--may yet be a long way off.[5]

Further support for Schellenberg's immaturity hypothesis comes from the work of Paul Draper. In a recent article, Draper explores the conjunction of "merotheism" (God is a proper part of nature) and "monopsychism" (there is exactly one mind or subject of consciousness). He calls this novel version of theism "panpsychotheism" (all-minds-[are]-God-ism).[6] The important point to notice here is that, although some of the greatest minds in history have thought about God, there is no indication that anyone else had thought of this view. All by itself, this single example is evidence that there are other conceptions of God which no one has previously conceived. 

In contrast, I think the second argument fails and for essentially the same reason given earlier. At least some God concepts entail or make probable certain states of affairs which be confirmed or disconfirmed by experience. For example, suppose that, in honor of Richard Swinburne, we define a "Swinburne God" as

a being with most of the following properties: being a person without a body (that is, a spirit), present everywhere (that is, omnipresent), the creator of the universe, perfectly free, able to do anything (that is, omnipotent), knowing all things (that is, omniscient), perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, eternal, a necessary being, holy, and worthy of worship. [7]

Let "Swinburnian theism" be the proposition, "The Swinburne God exists." Swinburnian theism clearly entails other propositions; one does not need to know that one of those entailments is false in order to reasonably believe that one of those entailments (and, by extension, Swinburnian theism itself) is false.[8] This is why I think the second premise (step 2) of the "unknowability of local atheism" argument fails.

3.2: The Pragmatic Inconsistency of Believing Atheism Argument

In the last section, we saw that the unprovability of atheism argument is not successful, but can be at least partially repaired by transforming it into the unknowability of atheism argument. The conclusion of that argument is:

(5') It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis.

Defenders of the pragmatic inconsistency argument should then revise the last three steps as follows.

(6') The action of reasonably believing, "God does not exist," presupposes that the speaker is God. 

From (5') and (6'), it follows that: 

(7') If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis then it is true that God does not exist and it is false that God does not exist.

From (7') and the Law of Noncontradiction, it follows that: 

(8') It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," on an a posteriori basis. 

This argument fails for two reasons. First, its second premise, (6'), is false. Even if it is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe atheism on an a posteriori basis, it does not follow that it is impossible for such beings to reasonably believe atheism on an a priori basis. One does not have to be omniscient in order to know, much less reasonably believe, that there is a successful a priori argument for local atheism.

For example, here is one schema for what I call an "internal inconsistency argument" for local atheism.

(9) If God existed, then He would have property P1.

(10) If God existed, then He would have property P2.

(11) Any being with property P1 would have some further property P3.

(12) Any being with property P2 would not have property P3.

(13) Therefore, it is impossible for any being to have properties P1 and P2. (from 11 and 12)

(14) Hence, it is impossible for God to exist. (from 9, 10 and 13)

The basic idea is to show that if God existed, then he would have two properties P1 and P2. The next step is to show that property P1 entails some third property P3, while property P2 entails the denial of property P3. Since it is impossible for any being both to have and not have P3, it follows that that being cannot exist. While it might or might not be the case that there are no successful arguments of this type for local atheism, it really doesn't matter one way or the other for the purpose of this post. The speaker does not need to be omniscient in order to know the truth of (9) - (12).

Second, the argument's conclusion, (8'), does not follow from (5') - (7'). (6') refers to the action of claiming to reasonably believe, "God does not exist," but does not specify that that knowledge is based upon an a posteriori basis.

As with the unknowability of atheism argument, let us now consider two versions of the pragmatic inconsistency argument based on the distinction between global and local atheism. The global version can be summarized as follows:

(5*) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis.

(6*) The action of reasonably believing global atheism presupposes that the speaker is God. 

Therefore:

(7*) If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes global atheism on an a posteriori basis, then global atheism is true and global atheism is false.

Therefore:

(8*) It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe global atheism on an a posteriori basis. 

There are two problems with this argument. The first is that it is invalid: (6*) refers to the action of claiming to reasonably believe global atheism but does not specify that that knowledge is based upon an a posteriori basis. It seems to me that this objection could be avoided by revising the argument again as follows:

(5**) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe global atheism.

(6**) The action of reasonably believing global atheism presupposes that the speaker is God. 

Therefore:

(7**) If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes global atheism, then global atheism is true and global atheism is false.

Therefore:

(8**) It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe global atheism.

That solves the problem identified by the first objection, but brings into sharper focus the second objection. Even if we assume that premise (5**) can be adequately defended, premise (6**) does not seem to be true. If premise (5**) is true, then it seems that the action of claiming to reasonably believe global atheism presupposes that the speaker has knowledge which greatly exceeds that of any human being in history. But "has knowledge which greatly exceeds that of any human being in history" is not a sufficient condition for being God. First, it's far from obvious that such knowledge requires omniscience, and many conceptions of God posit an omniscient being, not just a really smart being. Second, even if the speaker's actions did presuppose that the speaker is omniscient, being omniscient is not a sufficient condition for being God. It is at least conceivable that there exists an omniscient being which does not have any of the other attributes typically associated with God, such as omnipotence, moral perfection, eternity, aseity, sovereignty, immutability, necessity, etc.  

I don't know how Bahnsen would respond to this objection. Perhaps Bahnsen could show that the speaker's actions require such a superhuman degree of knowledge that the speaker's actions presuppose that the speaker is not necessarily God, but at least a supernatural being. Since metaphysical naturalism rules out the existence of any supernatural beings, not just God, the argument could then be transformed into a pragmatic inconsistency argument against believing metaphysical naturalism. 

Now consider the local version of the pragmatic inconsistency argument, which can be summarized as follows:

(5#) It is impossible for finite, mortal beings to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis.

(6#) The action of reasonably believing local atheism presupposes that the speaker is God. 

Therefore:

(7#) If a finite, mortal being reasonably believes global atheism on an a posteriori basis, then global atheism is true and global atheism is false.

Therefore:

(8#) It is impossible for a finite, mortal being to reasonably believe local atheism on an a posteriori basis.  

This argument suffers from the same defects as its global counterpart. Unlike the global pragmatic inconsistency argument, however, I am doubtful that the second premise, in this case (6#), can be repaired by replacing "God" with "supernatural being." For ordinary human knowledge is all that is needed to reasonably believe that some local theisms are false. Thus, the action of claiming to reasonably believe local atheism does not appear to be a pragmatic inconsistency, at least not in any sense related to the issues discussed in this post. 

4: Conclusion

In this post, I have considered two arguments: the unprovability of atheism argument and the pragmatic inconsistency of knowing atheism argument. The unprovability of atheism argument is best and most charitably understood as the unknowability of atheism argument, which has two versions. The unknowability of global atheism argument seems promising, but the unknowability of local atheism argument fails. For at least some concepts of "God," one can reasonably believe that local atheism is true. Finally, the pragmatic inconsistency argument fails because one does not need to be superhuman, much less omniscient, in order to reasonably believe the truth of the premises of an internal inconsistency argument. Perhaps there is a successful global pragmatic inconsistency argument (against the action of believing naturalism), but the local pragmatic inconsistency argument seems hopeless.[9]

Notes

[1] “Michael Martin Under the Microscope” audiocassette, tape 3.

[2] William Lane Craig, “Second Rebuttal Speech” Atheism vs. Christianity (January 1993), https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/atheism-vs.-christianity

[3] Thanks to Paul Draper for helping me to see this clearly.

[4] Diller, J. "Global and local atheisms." Int J Philos Relig 79, 7–18 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-015-9550-1

[5] J.L. Schellenberg, Progressive Atheism: How Moral Evolution Changes the God Debate (New York: Bloombsury, 2019), p. 50.

[6] Paul Draper, "Panpsychotheism." In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 160-177.

[7] Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 1.

[8] For an example of such an argument, see Paul Draper's formulation and defense of his "Decisive Evidence Argument" in Draper, Paul, "Atheism and Agnosticism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/atheism-agnosticism/>.

[9] Thanks to Paul Draper for some very helpful conversations which significantly improved the quality of this post. Any errors are, of course, solely my responsibility.

More on Plantinga, Atheism, and Moral Obligation

Today I remembered Plantinga wrote a very interesting article on naturalism and obligation back in 2010 in the journal Faith and Philosophy. I just checked my archives and made an interesting discovery. First, that article reinforces my belief that Plantinga believes atheism (and, indeed, naturalism) and moral obligation are incompatible. Second, in that article, Plantinga explicitly says he is not going to argue directly for that incompatibility claim; rather, he intends to "display" the failure of the most natural way of arguing that naturalism can accommodate moral obligation. In his own words:

I propose to support the claim that naturalism cannot accommodate morality—not by showing directly that it can’t, but by displaying the failure of the most natural way of arguing that it can.

Imagine how Plantinga would have reacted if Mackie said, "I'm not going to directly argue for the claim that God and evil are incompatible. Rather, I'm going to indirectly argue for it by displaying the failure of the most natural way of arguing that God and evil are compatible." Surely Plantinga would have replied: "Even if Mackie succeeds at that task, that still falls short of what he needs to defend his logical argument from evil: a rigorous defense of the claim that God and evil are incompatible." And Plantinga would have been right.

By similar reasoning, then, it seems to me that the Autonomous Morality Defender ("Defender") would be just as correct to use a parallel reply to Plantinga. Even if Plantinga's article succeeds in showing that the "most natural way of arguing that" naturalism can "accommodate morality" fails, Plantinga would still fall short of what he needs to defend his 'logical' argument from morality for theism.

Atheism and Self-Deception

Source: WallPaper Flare

I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice this, but, in light of the frequent accusation that atheists are self-deceived, it is striking how common it is for atheists to be told to behave in ways that are self-deception (or what we might call "self-deception adjacent") to cultivate theistic belief.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice this, but, in light of the frequent accusation that atheists are self-deceived, it is striking how common it is for atheists to be told to behave in ways that are self-deception or self-deception adjacent.m, to cultivate theistic belief

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) July 10, 2023

Reppert's Atheistic Argument for Violence

Victor Reppert recently posted the following blog post, which I quote in its entirety.

An atheistic argument for violence:
1) Atheism is true, and so obviously so that religious believers must be insane.
2) Insane people can do outrageous things.
3) The people who promulgate belief in God are putting other people's sanity in danger.
4) Even if we have to forcibly stop them from doing so, we can prevent them from leading other people on the road to insanity, and hence possibly outrageous actions.
5) Therefore, the use of force in the name of suppressing religion is justified.

Theological Ethics as Dogma

(Note: The following post was originally written on October 19, 2011, but was never quite finished. I am publishing it now "as is." I am clearing out my backlog of draft blog posts but I am officially on a hiatus from blogging. What this means is that while you are free to comment on this post, readers should not expect engagement from me anytime soon.)

Apologists have said, ad nauseum, that atheists are guilty of presupposing a priori the truth of metaphysical naturalism in both their arguments and in their responses to theistic arguments. Phillip Johnson is especially notorious for this in his criticisms of evolutionists. And N.T. scholars like Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig and Craig Blomberg do this when criticizing their liberal critics, like Antony Flew, Gerd Ludemann, and especially John Dominic Crossan.

While there have been nontheists who may be guilty of that charge, naturalistic atheists don't need to presuppose naturalism in order to make their case. But in this article I wish to focus on a different point. I believe that the Christian focus on presuppositions reveals a rhetorical strategy that has been extremely effective for Christians. As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about metaethics, it occurred to me that it might be fruitful to turn the tables on proponents of theistic metaethics. The more I learn about atheistic metaethics, the more it seems to me that many proponents of theistic metaethics are just blatantly presupposing, a priori, that ethics cannot be secular. In other words, some proponents of theological ethics rule out the possibility of naturalistic ethics a priori.

For an example of how such an objection to theistic writings on religion and morality would look, I went to arn.org, one of the official sites for evolution denier Phillip Johnson. At that site, I found an article titled, "Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism," which sounded like an article concerned exclusively with the alleged a priori presupposition of naturalism in science. And indeed it was. So using Johnson's words as a starting point, I developed my own 'paraphrase' of Johnson, except that I directed the accusation of bias against theists who discount secular ethics. Here is what I came up with:

Theistic metaethics is so deeply ingrained in the thinking of many educated people today that they find it difficult even to imagine any other way of looking at things. To such people, theistic metaethics seems so logically appealing that only a modest amount of confirming evidence is needed to prove the whole system, and so they point to the "objectivity" of morality as virtually conclusive. Even if they do develop doubts about, say, whether God's commands are needed for moral duties, their belief that an objective morality requires a theistic grounding is undisturbed. Because they believe morality is objective and that their Bible tells them that God must be sovereign over everything that exists, it follows that morality must be dependent upon God if it is objective.

The same situation looks quite different to people who accept the possibility of moral values and duties which are not dependent on God. To such people, who include both nontheists and theists, the idea that God could make cruelty morally valuable or torture a moral duty is absurd. From their perspective, there is no relevant difference between saying, on the one hand, that an all-powerful God can do anything which is logically possible and, on the other hand, that a morally perfect God can do anything which is morally permissible. If it is no violation of God's sovereignty to say that God cannot do the logically impossible (such as make it both true and false that unicorns exist), then it should equally be no violation of God's sovereignty to say that God cannot make the immoral (such as the slaughter of the Canaanites) moral just by issuing a command. But this is unimportant to a thoroughgoing devotee of theistic metaethics, who feels that apologetics is doing just fine so long as it can offer an foundation for ethics that is merely consistent with theism, no matter how implausible.

Victory in the dispute over secular vs. religious ethics therefore belongs to the party with the cultural authority to establish the ground rules that govern the discourse. If the autonomy of ethics is admitted as a serious possibility, theistic metaethics cannot win, and if it is excluded a priori theistic metaethics cannot lose. 

Link: The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism

Abstract: The metaphilosophy of naturalism is about the nature and goals of naturalist philosophy. A real or hypothetical person who knows the nature, goals and consequences of naturalist philosophy may be called an “informed naturalist.” An informed naturalist is justified in drawing certain conclusions about the current state of naturalism and the research program that naturalist philosophers ought to undertake. One conclusion is that the great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false. I explain this epistemic situation in this paper. I also articulate the goals an informed naturalist would recommend to remedy this situation. These goals, for the most part, have as their consequence the restoring of naturalism to its original state (approximately, to a certain degree, given the great difference in the specific theories), which is the state it possessed in Greco-Roman philosophy before naturalism was “overwhelmed” in the Middle Ages, beginning with Augustine (naturalism had critics as far back as Xenophanes, sixth century B.C.E., but it was not “overwhelmed” until much later). Contemporary naturalists still accept, unwittingly, the redefinition of naturalism that began to be constructed by theists in the fifth century C.E. and that underpins our basic world-view today.

LINK

The Guardian: Atheism Itself Isn't a Movement

LINK

Quentin Smith's Atheistic vs. Theistic Explanations of the Beginning of Spacetime

LINK

Richard Gale's Sovereignty-Benevolence Argument

Richard Gale presents the following argument to show that objective moral truths are not the sort of things that could be created.

(1) God determines the truth-values of ethical propositions.
(2) God is essentially benevolent.
(3) God is omnitemporal, i.e., his eternality involves beginningless and endless duration in time.
(4) God is benevolent prior to his decision as to what truth-values ethical propositions will have. [From (2) and (3)]
(5) Nothing is good or bad, right or wrong, prior to God's decision as to what truth-values ethical propositions will have. [From (1)]
(6) Therefore, it is impossible for God to exist. [From (1), (2), and (5)]

LINK: Michael Antony's Review of Reasonable Atheism by Aikin and Talisse

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on November 8, 2011. It was republished here on November 9, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link has also been updated to reflect its current location as of November 8, 2011.]

Pope Blames Atheism for Concentration Camps

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 30, 2011. It was republished here on November 9, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]

I'm going to quote, without commentary, what the Pope had to say on Thursday about atheism.

If one basic type of violence today is religiously motivated and thus confronts religions with the question as to their true nature and obliges all of us to undergo purification, a second complex type of violence is motivated in precisely the opposite way: as a result of God’s absence, his denial and the loss of humanity which goes hand in hand with it. The enemies of religion – as we said earlier – see in religion one of the principal sources of violence in the history of humanity and thus they demand that it disappear. But the denial of God has led to much cruelty and to a degree of violence that knows no bounds, which only becomes possible when man no longer recognizes any criterion or any judge above himself, now having only himself to take as a criterion. The horrors of the concentration camps reveal with utter clarity the consequences of God’s absence.

The absence of God leads to the decline of man and of humanity. But where is God? Do we know him, and can we show him anew to humanity, in order to build true peace? Let us first briefly summarize our considerations thus far. I said that there is a way of understanding and using religion so that it becomes a source of violence, while the rightly lived relationship of man to God is a force for peace. In this context I referred to the need for dialogue and I spoke of the constant need for purification of lived religion. On the other hand I said that the denial of God corrupts man, robs him of his criteria and leads him to violence.

LINK (HT: Godless in Italy)

Biological Evolution as Evidence against Theism

Many conservative Christians and lay atheists alike claim that if biological evolution is true, then God does not exist. Ironically, while many conservative Christians have attacked evolution because it supposedly entails atheism, no contemporary atheist philosopher has used evolution as evidence for atheism. Indeed, the only philosopher who has formulated an argument for the claim that evolution is evidence against theism and for metaphysical naturalism is agnostic philosopher Paul Draper.

Draper defends an evidential argument from evolution for naturalism. In other words, Draper's argument does not claim that evolution is logically inconsistent with the existence of God. Rather, it claims that known facts about evolution that are consistent with theism nevertheless provide evidence against it.

This argument is focused on God in general, not necessarily the Christian God. Draper argues that, all other things held equal, known facts about the origin of complex life are prima facie evidence against theism.

LINK: The Myth of Militant Atheism

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 28, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. ]

"[W]hile millions of atheists are indeed walking our streets, it would be difficult to find even one who could accurately be described as militant. In all of American history, it is doubtful that any person has ever been killed in the name of atheism. In fact, it would be difficult to find evidence that any American has ever even been harmed in the name of atheism. It just does not happen, because the notion of "militant atheism" is entirely fantasy."

LINK: Audio of Russell-Copleston Debate on God's Existence (Part 1 of 2)

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 22, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

 

This is an excerpt from the famous BBC Radio debate between Father Frederick C. Copleston and Bertrand Russell. In this section, they discuss Leibniz's Argument from Contingency, which is a form of the Cosmological Argument. It differs from other Cosmological arguments (e.g. Kalam) in that it is consistent with an eternal universe, as it doesn't appeal to first causes, but rather the principle of sufficient reason. It can be summarized in this way:

(1) Everything that exists contingently has a reason for its existence.
(2) The universe exists contingently.

Therefore:

(3) The universe has a reason for its existence.
(4) If the universe has a reason for its existence then that reason is God.

Therefore:

(5) God exists.

For a transcript of the debate (including other topics discussed), follow this link:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/copleston.htm

You can download the audio here:
http://www.archive.org/details/DebateOnTheExistenceOfGodBertrandRussellV.Fr.F...

LINK: Mark Wynn's Review of The Non-Existence of God by Nicholas Everitt

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 21, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

LINK

Is Antony Flew a Former Agnostic or Former Atheist?

(This is another item from my drafts folder that was never published. I think I wrote this in early 2006. I have fixed/added some links and made some edits.)

The journal Philosophia Christi and perhaps, by extension, Biola University, have made a big deal of Antony Flew's conversion from atheism to theism in the article, "Atheist Becomes Theist." See:

http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/

When Flew did call himself an atheist, he made it very clear that he always considered himself a so-called 'negative' atheist. In his terminology, he lacked belief in God, but he never held the positive belief that God does not exist. In this sense, Flew's "presumption of atheism" could be renamed the "presumption of agnosticism" (as at least one Christian apologist has pointed out).  Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Flew never accepted any of the arguments for the nonexistence of God. (If anyone knows of any evidence to the contrary, please let me know and I will accordingly issue an update to this post.)

Why does this matter? Because many theists, including several of the Christian philosophers associated with Philosophia Christi (Craig [see here], Moreland, Geivett, Copan [see here], et al) have always criticized this definition of atheism as revisionist. Whenever someone would say in a debate that atheism is merely the lack of theistic belief, the Philosophia Christi philosophers would say that atheism is properly defined as what Flew called 'positive' atheism, viz, the belief that God does not exist. According to these philosophers, individuals who are merely 'negative' atheists are not atheists at all.

So it seems there is tension here, if not an outright contradiction, between what some Christian philosophers have typically said about the definition of atheism, and their attribution of atheism to Antony Flew.
Either Flew was an atheist and so-called 'negative' atheism is a form of atheism after all, or atheism must be defined as the positive belief that there is no God and hence Flew was never an atheist (in that sense) and hence theists should not refer to Flew as a former atheist.

In order to avoid any misunderstandings, I want to emphasize a couple of points. First, I am not objecting to the Philosophia Christi philosophers' insistence that atheism be defined as the positive belief there is no God. In fact, I pretty much agree with them. Second, regardless of how we label Flew's pre-Deism position (e.g., 'atheist', 'negative atheist', or agnostic), nothing I have written is any way meant to deny the fact that Flew apparently moved from naturalism to supernaturalism (i.e., deism). All I have claimed is that there seems to be a tension between how certain Christian philosophers have defined atheism, on the one hand, and how they have labeled Flew's beliefs prior to his conversion to deism.

LINK: Philip Kitcher on Militant Modern Atheism

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 19, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

From the abstract:

Militant modern atheism, whose most eloquent champion is Richard Dawkins, provides an effective and necessary critique of fundamentalist forms of religion and their role in political life, both within states and across national boundaries. Because it is also presented as a more general attack on religion (tout court), it has provoked a severe reaction from scholars who regard its conception of religion as shallow and narrow. My aim is to examine this debate, identifying insights and oversights on both sides.

Two distinct conceptions of religion are in play. For Dawkins and his allies (most notably Dan Dennett) religions are grounded in doctrines, propositions about supernatural entities, events and processes which the devout believe. Their beliefs prompt them to actions, which they support or rationalize by reference to the doctrines. Dawkins and Dennett view the acceptance of the doctrines as resting on cognitive misfiring — these are delusions to be outgrown or spells to be broken.

By contrast, the religious scholars who criticize the militant atheists often view religion as centered in social practices that inform and enrich human lives. To the extent that there are doctrines that atheists might subject to epistemic evaluation, these are to be viewed as pieces of scaffolding, that are, in principle, dispensable.

I argue that militant modern atheism is incomplete (and likely counter-productive) so long as it fails to attend systematically to the roles religion fulfills in human lives. Yet it is important to achieve public clarity about the literal falsehood of the doctrines on which fundamentalists rely. The challenge is to develop a well-articulated and convincing version of secular humanism. Meeting that challenge is, I claim, one of the central problems of philosophy today.

Unfortunately, online access to this paper is not free (see here for options), but I did find several discussions of Kitcher's paper on the web:

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/kitcher-and-dennett-on-new-atheism.html
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/kitcher-versus-dennett-is-new-atheism-counterproductive-2
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_11.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/curently-reading-philip-kitchers.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_13.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_15.html
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2010/10/currently-reading-philip-kitchers_21.html

Wanchick's Reply to Baggini

(Again, this is another article in my Drafts folder that was never posted before I stopped blogging. I think I wrote this in 2005 or 2006. In the spirit of clearing out the backlog, I am posting it now.)

Tom Wanchick has written a reply to or review of Julian Baggini's, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction:

An Argument from Moral Realism to Atheism

In a recent article, Quentin Smith formulates a creative argument for atheism based on the combination of moral realism and infinite spacetime. Smith formulates his argument as follows:

1. Moral realism is true.
2. The universe in which we live is infinite.
3. At least one relevant version of an aggregative theory of values is true.
4. Therefore, God does not exist.

The Scale of the Universe as Evidence for Naturalism?

In his book, The Non-Existence of God, philosopher Nicholas Everitt provides the first detailed analysis and defense of the argument from scale for God's nonexistence. Everitt formulates his argument as follows:

(1) If the God of classical theism existed, with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him, then he would create a universe on a human scale, i.e. one that is not unimaginably large, unimaginably old, and in which human beings form an unimaginably tiny part of it, temporally and spatially.
(2) The world does not display a human scale.
(3) Therefore, there is evidence against the hypothesis that the God of classical theism exists with the purposes traditionally ascribed to him.