LINK: Is God a Moral Compromiser?

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 24, 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.]

Christian scholar Thom Stark has written a book-length rebuttal to Christian philosopher Paul Copan's book, Is God a Moral Monster? (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011).  The title of Stark's book is, Is God a Moral Compromiser? A Critical Review of Paul Copan's "Is God a Moral Monster?" (second ed.). Stark's entire book is available for free as a PDF file on his website.

Observant readers will notice I included a "new atheism" label on this post, insofar as the new atheists criticize the morality of the actions attributed to God by the Bible and insofar as Copan's book is partially a response to those criticisms.

Open-Minded Atheists?

(This is another item from the backlog in my Drafts folder. I think I wrote it in 2005 or 2006. This all seems moot since Flew has now passed away, but I'm posting it here for what it is worth.)


I was recently made aware of the following article:

Douglas LeBlanc, "Atheists and Theists Analyze Antony Flew’s Newfound Deism" Christian Research Journal, volume 28, number 3 (2005), http://www.equip.org/free/JAF175.htm

What I find interesting about this article is not the opinions expressed regarding Flew's conversion from agnosticism to Deism, but what appear to be implied pot shots by Gary Habermas and Douglas Geivett against (some?) atheists.

For example, in commenting on Flew conversion, Habermas stated, "“Here’s a guy who may be more open-minded than I thought,” Habermas said. “I think over the years we haven’t taken him at his word when he says he goes where the evidence leads.” It is unclear why Habermas did not take previously take Flew at his word. One potential explanation worries me. Habermas's remark reminds me of a belief held by many theists (not necessarily Habermas), that nonbelief is never rational but instead the result of a willful choice to suppress the truth of theism in order to justify an immoral lifestyle.

Turning to Doug Geivett, Geivett quoted Richard Carrier's article on Flew's conversion from nontheism to Deism, in which Carrier wrote:

This would appear to be his excuse for everything: he won’t investigate the evidence because it’s too hard. Yet he will declare beliefs in the absence of proper inquiry. Theists would do well to drop the example of Flew. Because his willfully sloppy scholarship can only help to make belief look ridiculous.

Before I comment on Geivett's remarks, I first need to mention a potential area of disagreement between Carrier and I: I don't necessarily agree with the last sentence in the above quotation. If Flew's scholarship was "willfully sloppy," at most that damages Flew's credibility, not the credibility of supernatural belief in general. Turning to Geivett, Geivett said that Carrier seemed concerned that Flew’s new beliefs “would disturb people’s faith that God does not exist.” Also, in another apparent (?) reference to Carrier, Geivett wrote, "I regret the churlish attitude of some who are scandalized by his intellectual honesty and his cautiously nuanced position.”

While I do not speak for Carrier, I highly doubt that he was "scandalized" by Flew's change in position. Just as Geivett correctly notes that the evidential strength of the case for Christianity "does not depend on the conversion of a notable" nontheist, the evidential strength of the case for naturalism is not undermined by the conversion of a nontheist, even a notable nontheist.

Also, LeBlanc's article does not contain any discussion about Flew's own admissions that he failed to research specific pieces of evidence. For example, regarding the origin of life, Carrier quoted Flew as stating:

I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction.

There is also no reference to Flew's admission that he was "mistaught by Gerald Schroeder," regarding the alleged theistic implications of physics. In terms of the reported reasons for Flew's newfound Deism, these seem to be significant reversals. After all, according to the transcript of Habermas's interview of Flew, Flew summarized his following reasons for embracing Deism.

• "The biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation," based upon the writings of Gerald Schroeder.
• Flew also thinks "the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it. " He has "never been much impressed by the kalam cosmological argument," and he doesn't "think it has gotten any stronger recently." But he is apparently impressed with other arguments for intelligent design, based upon big bang cosmology and fine tuning.
• It's not clear to me if Flew considers this evidence for Deism or just evidence favoring the existence of disembodied minds, but Flew has become convinced that evidence of near death experiences "certainly constitute impressive evidence for the possibility of the occurrence of human consciousness independent of any occurrences in the human brain."

So it appears Flew has come to reject two of his three stated reasons for embracing Deism.

In conclusion: Habermas admission that he did not previously take Flew at his word is troubling. Geivett's (apparent?) comments about Carrier go too far. And LeBlanc's article does not acknowledge Flew's reversal on his two of his major reasons for switching from nontheism to Deism. Nevertheless, I do agree with Geivett that Flew should be "given the space he needs to draw his own conclusions and report them on his own terms.”

Also, to repeat what I wrote in a related article about Flew, 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 it appears that, as of 2005 or 2006, Flew apparently came to reject two of his three stated reasons for embracing Deism.

LINK: Atheist Philosopher Julian Baggini Labels New Atheism "Destructive"

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 24, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date.]

(This is another one for the "not new, but new for me" category.)

Julian Baggini, author of the excellent book, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, explains that the four horseman of the new atheism is a "backwards step. It reinforces what I believe is a myth, that an atheist without a bishop to bash is like a fish without water."

LINK: Jason B. Thibodeau Comments on Flannagan, Coyne, and Explaining Morality

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 24, 2011. It was republished here on November 8, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. I have added a summary of the linked blog post below.]

"Flannagan himself is guilty of misunderstanding Coyne’s argument about the Euthyphro dilemma and he wants to downplay some of the serious problems that the dilemma creates for God-based moral theories."

 LINK

LINK: Dave Harker on A Surprise for Horwich (and Some Advocates of the Fine-Tuning Argument (which does not include Horwich (as far as I know)))

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 23, 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.]

Abstract

The judgment that a given event is epistemically improbable is necessary but insufficient for us to conclude that the event is surprising. Paul Horwich has argued that surprising events are, in addition, more probable given alternative background assumptions that are not themselves extremely improbable. I argue that Horwich’s definition fails to capture important features of surprises and offer an alternative definition that accords better with intuition. An important application of Horwich’s analysis has arisen in discussions of fine-tuning arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider the implications for this argument of employing my definition of surprise. I argue that advocates of fine-tuning arguments are not justified in attaching significance to the fact that we are surprised by examples of fine-tuning.

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

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: 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

LINK: Gianluca Di Muzio on Theism and the Meaning of Life

Abstract

Theists are inclined to assert that human life would be meaningless if there was no personal immortality and God did not exist. The present paper aims to evaluate the truth of this claim. The author first explores the conception of meaning that is at the roots of the theistic position. After pointing out some difficulties with it, the author shows that, on a plausible alternative interpretation of what it is for an activity to have meaning, human life would fully qualify as meaningful even if it were not inscribed in a universal divine plan.

LINK 

LINK: Atheist Ethicist: Atheists Speaking about Morality

[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.]

This is an old post by Alonzo Fyfe, but one not previously mentioned on The Secular Outpost, where he critiques atheists who have spoken about morality.

Allow me to step back a moment and put the posts of the last three weeks in a larger context.

This series of posts started with a complaint about a debate between Dan Barker and Dinesh D’Souza on the possibility of being good without God. Barker gave a definition of 'good' that left him unable to answer basic questions such as, "Why is this thing good and not something else?" and "How do you get people to actually be good?"

...

We have spokesmen attempting to answer the question of how there can be morality without God who are substantially ignorant of 400 years of moral philosophy in which this topic was discussed.

They have obviously taken upon themselves to get a superficial understanding of the subject matter. They demonstrate this with casual references to “the naturalistic fallacy” and “the impossibility of deriving 'ought' from 'is'". However, they continue to make claims that moral philosophers have discussed for centuries without any clear indication that they understand the problems with those theories.

...

Another cringe moment was listening to (I bought the audio book) Sam Harris give an act-utilitarian defense of torture in The End of Faith without acknowledging that moral philosophers had raised nearly 200 years’ worth of objections to act utilitarian theories.

If somebody is going to be a spokesperson for atheists, then that person should recognize that one of (if not the) core issues is the relationship between morality and religion and the relationship between immorality and atheism. They should recognize that moral philosophy should be something about which they have some significant understanding.

Atheist Ethicist: Atheists Speaking about Morality

LINK: Alonzo Fyfe on Wielenberg's Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe

[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.]

Just discovered this and sharing the link without taking a position on its arguments.

Wielenberg claims that moral properties are transcendental unanalyzable ‘ought’ properties that cannot bear any relationship to the ‘is’ universe even though they are supposed to govern and be applied to actions that can only occur in the ‘is’ universe.

Any mention of transcendental properties causes me to hesitate unless one can prove that they are absolutely necessary. When comparing two theories – one of which argues for transcendental properties that are incompatible with the ‘is’ universe, and one which does not need such properties, there are good reasons to go with the latter theory, which is where my arguments go.

Weisenberg [sic] can give us very little (no) information on what these properties are. He can tell us what they are not (they are not ‘is’ properties) – which makes no sense, as I explain in the book. He tells good stories that suggest that certain things could not possibly be wrong – but he tells us nothing about what they are and why they cannot be wrong. Indeed, Weisenberg’s [sic] transcendental moral properties are at least as mysterious as any God concept.

LINK -- Fyfe's comments are located near the bottom of the page (HT: Luke Muelhauser)

Catalog of Bayesian Arguments in Philosophy of Religion

[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.]

I've created a new page, with a permanent link near the top of the screen, to a catalog of Bayesian arguments in the philosophy of religion, including Bayesian arguments for and against God's existence. This is a work-in-progress, so please leave a comment on that page to let me know of any additions, edits, etc. I need to make.

Extreme Unfriendly Theism or Abusive Theism

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 20, 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 another item in the "not new, but new for me" category. I was familiar with presuppositionalism, but not this particular presuppositionalist. Based on how radical Cheung's position is, I guess you could also place this in the "you can't make this stuff up" category.)

Vincent Cheung is a Christian apologist of the presuppositionalist variety. His website includes two articles which defend his calling all non-Christians "morons":

• Professional Morons (note: as of November 8, 2021, this article was now available as a chapter in the linked book)
• A Moron By Any Other Name (note: as of November 8, 2021, this article was now available as a chapter in the linked book)

In this post, I am simply going to quote some excepts from these articles:

According to Scripture, all non-Christians are morons.

It is important for us to realize that non-Christians are morons and that I am right in stating this as an integral part of the biblical approach to apologetics. This is because if we are going to face our intellectual enemies with Scripture as our weapon, then we better first accept Scripture's own description of the unbelievers, that they are stupid and depraved. No wonder many Christians are such feeble apologists! They have rejected Scripture's own description about the situation from the start.

Cheung then turns to philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong to provide an example of what he calls a professional moron. But first Cheung takes issue with William Craig's performance against Craig:

Then, one day my wife came home and said that she heard William Lane Craig in an interview on a Christian radio program. The interview was mainly to promote this book, and the host of the program asked Craig about several of the issues that were discussed in the debate. My wife thought that Craig's responses were too uncertain, too tentative, and she wondered whether such weak answers do more damage rather than good for the Christian cause.

Turning to Sinnott-Armstrong, after criticizing various statements and arguments by Sinnott-Armstrong, Cheung offers this assessment:

Look how far the human race has fallen, that someone can be this stupid! Like all other non-Christian scholars, Sinnott-Armstrong is an intellectual fraud. He passes himself off as a professional philosopher, and claims to be one who examines the assumptions behind people's beliefs. Yet, at essential points in his arguments, he resorts to subjective intuition, common sense, and popular opinion. Professor of philosophy? I would not trust him to teach even elementary school debate. He is better off roaming the streets and picking up soda cans – at least then he would be making an honest living. Where are the scholars? Where are the philosophers? Where are the professors of this world? Has not God made intellectual mincemeat out of them?

You might exclaim, "What?! He calls himself a philosopher, and this is how he argues? What's wrong with him?!" I already told you – he is a moron.

And elsewhere we get this generalization:

You might exclaim, "What?! Are they stupid or something?" Yes, they are stupid, and these are the same morons who attack your faith and call you irrational. They are desperate and dishonest. They are finding it impossible to remain rational apart from reliance on God's revelation, but they refuse to admit it.

Cheung makes it absolutely clear the same conclusion holds for any other non-Christian professional philosopher:

I have used Sinnott-Armstrong and Zarefsky only as examples, but all other non- Christian thinkers are just as mentally feeble. Whether it is Michael Martin, Kai Nielsen, or some other non-Christian in the past or present, it makes no difference.

Furthermore, not only are non-Christian philosophers "mentally feeble," but even small children are intellectually superior to non-Christian professional philosophers:

This brings us to an important point mentioned earlier. Can even children defeat these non-Christian professors in debate? They certainly can, if they are properly trained by their parents and their pastors. God has already made the unbelievers foolish (1 Corinthians 1:20), and he delights in using the lowly things to humiliate the proud (v. 28). Although we should all participate, who better to embarrass non-Christian scholars than the children, the mentally disabled, and the uneducated?

And elsewhere, Cheung writes:

According to Scripture, unbelievers are nothing but spiritual and intellectual fecal matter. Otherwise, why in the world do you think they need to convert? Why do you think that they are helpless apart from God's sovereign grace?

He concludes:

Under biblically-approved conditions, we are permitted, and at times even duty-bound, to use biblical invectives against unbelievers and heretics. We do not call them "morons" or "feces" out of personal vindictiveness, but to proclaim what Scripture says about them, and to declare to them that they are not the rational and decent people that they imagine themselves to be.

Let us hope that Cheung's apologetics is as fringe to Christian apologetics, as Westboro Baptist Church is to Christian churches.

LINK: Brian Garvey on Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist's Teapot

[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.]

Abstract

Atheists often admit that there is no positive evidence for atheism. Many argue that there is nonetheless a prima facie argument, which I will refer to as the ‘teapot argument’. They liken agnosticism to remaining neutral on the existence of a teapot in outer space. The present paper argues that this analogy fails, for the person who denies such a teapot can agree with the person who affirms it regarding every other feature of the world, which is not the case with the atheist vis-a-vis the theist. The atheist is committed to there being an alternative explanation of why the universe exists and is the way it is. Moreover, the analogy relies on assumptions about the prior plausibility of atheism. Hence, the teapot argument fails.

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.

Flanagan's Response to Me (Re: Jerry Coyne on Explaining Morality)

[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.]

Matthew Flanagan has written a response to my post on Jerry Coyne and explaining morality. I am quoting his response in its entirety, with Flannagan's permission.

Hi Jeffery, I tried posting this on your site but couldn’t, feel free to do so.

You write: ”I suspect that C.S. Lewis’ moral argument for God’s existence is probably much more influential among the average reader of USA Today than the work of Robert Adams. And Lewis does appeal to a variety of moral phenomena in in Mere Christianity as part of his moral argument for God’s existence. That phenomena includes not only what Lewis calls the “Moral Law,” but also moral emotions (e.g., guilt, obligation).”

I agree Coyne is probably referring to popular arguments like those by Lewis. (or Craig) .

However, I am inclined to see Lewis as offering a popularised version of Adam’s I spell this out in my article “God and the Moral Law in C S Lewis” which is forthcoming in a anthology on Lewis. In fact the phenomena of “guilt” is one of Adam’s central arguments in Finite and Infinite Goods, if you remember he argues that the such things as guilt, blame, and so on are central to the concept of obligation and suggest obligations are social requirements. The point I think in both authors is that guilt is not a feeling, it points to the state of being guilty, its possible for example to feel guilty for something and also know that reality its not your fault and you are not in fact guilty of the infraction.

I need to think about his thoughtful response before commenting. I hope to reply soon.

Update (21-Nov-11)

I just posted the following reply to Flanagan.

Hi Matt — Sorry for the delay in responding. You wrote:

I agree Coyne is probably referring to popular arguments like those by Lewis. (or Craig)

Fair enough. But if you agree that Coyne is probably referring to popular arguments like those by Lewis (or Craig), then I think you also must agree that Coyne’s naturalistic explanation for moral emotions is at least relevant to those arguments. Putting aside the issue of whether Coyne’s explanation is accurate, the problem with his response is that it is, at best, incomplete. As I argued in my original response, there is a distinction between the feeling of obligation and obligation itself.

You wrote:

However, I am inclined to see Lewis as offering a popularised version of Adam’s I spell this out in my article “God and the Moral Law in C S Lewis” which is forthcoming in a anthology on Lewis. In fact the phenomena of “guilt” is one of Adam’s central arguments in Finite and Infinite Goods, if you remember he argues that the such things as guilt, blame, and so on are central to the concept of obligation and suggest obligations are social requirements. The point I think in both authors is that guilt is not a feeling, it points to the state of being guilty, its possible for example to feel guilty for something and also know that reality its not your fault and you are not in fact guilty of the infraction.

I assume that you do not mean Lewis was familiar with and literally relying upon Adams’ work, since Adams hadn’t yet published anything on DCT when Lewis originally delivered his talks on the BBC which later became the book we know as Mere Christianity. Rather, I interpret your comment to mean that Lewis argued that the evidence to be explained includes not only the feeling of obligation, but also moral obligation itself. I agree with that interpretation of Lewis.

Still, I want to defend Jerry Coyne a little bit here. Lewis’ presentation of his moral argument is not exactly the clearest piece of analytic philosophy; it’s not like he he presents the logical form of his argument with numbered premises and a conclusion. In fact, I’ve read different Christian authors who are Lewis fans but who present his argument in different ways. (In fact, I think the clearest formulation of Lewis’s argument is to be found in a book by an atheist — Erik Wielenberg’s God and the Reach of Reason!) My point is simply that Lewis’s argument is not as clear as it could be. On the other hand, if Coyne were a philosopher, he probably would have recognized the distinction between the feeling of obligation and obligation.

As an aside, if you would be so kind to send me a copy of the article you wrote for the Lewis anthology, I would be grateful for the chance to read it. It sounds interesting!

LINK: Kohl Reviews Wielenberg's God and the Reach of Reason

[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.]

LINK

LINK: Tim Mawson's Review of Divine Motivation Theory by Linda Zagzebski

[This post was originally published on The Secular Outpost on October 19, 2011. It was republished here on November 9, 2021 with the date manually adjusted to reflect its original publication date. The link was also updated to its current location.]

LINK

LINK: Joel Marks on Atheism, Amorality, and Animals

[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.]

Philosopher Joel Marks, of "Confessions of an Ex-Moralist" Fame, recently wrote another essay for the New York Times on his amoralism and concern for the treatment of animals.

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