About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

On being a fulfilled atheist

by Massimo Pigliucci
As readers of this blog know, I am an atheist and yet I have some problems with the so-called “new atheism” (mostly that it isn’t new at all, and that it has a tendency to be unnecessarily obnoxious). Indeed, when asked, I prefer to use the term secular humanist to succinctly describe my philosophical position
But from time to time I have to remind myself of the importance of being an atheist and of actually saying so out loud. For instance, after I read the introduction to a recent episode of the Philosophy Talk podcast, hosted by philosophers John Perry and Ken Taylor (both at Stanford University). Philosophy Talk’s teasers are usually good and thought provoking, this one not so much.
The teaser was written by Perry as an introduction to a chat — during the podcast — with guests Ken and Louise Anthony. The trouble starts right off the bat, when Perry defines atheism: “An atheist is someone who not only doesn't believe in God, but believes, with some confidence, that there isn’t a God.” Oh no, it ain’t! That certainly describes some atheists, but not others. I, for instance, tend to stick to the etymology of the term, a-theism, meaning without a positive belief in god(s), so I consider myself an a-theist in pretty much the same manner in which most people are a-unicornists: they don’t believe in unicorns, not because they know that there aren’t any, but simply because they see neither evidence nor reason to hold that particular belief. As Hume put it, “A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence,” and when the evidence approaches zero...
Perry then continues: “At first glance, it seems odd to find inspiration in the non-existence of something.” Normally, I would agree, but considering that human beings have always lived in societies where irrationalism, obscurantism and magical thinking reigned supreme, to become “converted” (Perry’s term) to atheism is, indeed, inspiring. It’s extremely liberating to realize that there is no Big Guy in the sky watching over your every move (particularly, for reasons that are not at all clear, the moves you make in the privacy of your own bedroom).
“When you’re converted to atheism, the world goes from meaningful to meaningless, from caring to uncaring, from hopeful to hopeless.” Bullshit on stilts. Meaning doesn’t come from without, it is constructed by us through our reflections on the world and our interactions with fellow human beings. That, of course, is true also for religious people, except they don’t seem to realize it. As for caring, well, if we are talking about the Christian god, particularly the Old Testament nut job, I’d much rather not be cared for, lest I be forced to slaughter innocents and rape women just to please His Nuttiness and pander to His cosmic narcissism. And hopeless? Says who? I have always been, and continue to be, very hopeful, both in terms of my personal life (the next exciting thing is likely just around the corner, if I keep looking!) and about humanity in general. While it is demonstrably true that we have a penchant for fucking things up royally, there is also no question in my mind that we have done, ahem, miracles in terms of human flourishing since the time of the Tower of Babel — and certainly with no thanks due to imaginary deities.
Perry again: “[to the newly converted atheist] it becomes clear ... that there’s no evidence whatsoever for God, and considerable evidence against anything like the Christian God, or any lesser version of God. That can be depressing, we all must admit.” No, we don’t. I was so ecstatic after reading Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian (I was about 15 or so), that I could hardly contain my exuberance. Depressing my ass. (Though Perry thankfully goes on to acknowledge that even atheists continue to have fun and have friends...)
The podcast teaser then becomes a bit more positive toward atheists. After raising the question of the afterlife, Perry mentions Hume’s famous observation (itself a reminder of Epicurus), that all the years before our birth weren’t so bad after all, so why worry about those after our death? (Or, as Monty Python famously put it: “I mean — what have you got to lose? / You know, you come from nothing — you're going back to nothing. / What have you lost? Nothing!)
The next topic, inevitably, is morality, and the starting point is Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, who famously asked why isn’t everything permitted to an atheist? To which the simple response would be: just read Plato’s Euthyphro, dude. Equally reasonably, Perry notes that the Divine Command theory of morality is shaky on its own grounds, and that there are plenty of secular alternatives, from ethical “facts” thought of as similar to mathematical ones (i.e., immaterial, and yet objective), to one flavor or another of consequentialism or virtue ethics, to a naturalistic view of ethics as the result of evolution within a lineage of social primates.
Still, Perry insists: “Granted all of that, doesn’t it still seem strange to define one’s life by a negative claim, by the non-existence of something. You can become the village atheist, and make it your mission in life to tell religious people what idiots they are. But that doesn’t seem very fulfilling,” all the while admitting that he nonetheless finds atheism “hard to resist.”
Don’t resist it, then, embrace the negative claim that frees your mind from the shackles of superstition; the negative claim that allows you to make choices in life using reason and empathy; the negative claim that opens up all those doors to human flourishing that religion so quickly and persistently shuts tight. And of course, (most) atheists don’t make it their mission to tell religious people that they are idiots (yes, some do, and those are the ones that expel people like me from their non-church). Instead, what we do is try, to the best of our ability, to live the good life by example, and help those who are willing to listen to leave the Dark Ages and come out to enjoy a bit of Enlightenment — Hume style.

57 comments:

  1. I'm surprised to see PhD philosophers argue from within the context of any particular religious view. Thanks for keeping people rational about non-belief.

    What ever the official etymology of "atheism" may be, in my experience most people who call themselves atheists are certain that there is no God. That is, they not only hold no belief in God, they hold the belief that there is no God, usually pretty darn strongly.

    I know this because I like to test my 'agnostic' position among my atheist friends periodically, usually at atheist lectures. We tend to come to agreement only when we specifically define "God" as the supernatural personality painted by the Bible - I agree that no such being could exist.

    The problem is that this isn't a very useful position these days. Even most religious people will agree that the Bible is not literally true in all its detail. The general atheist position appears to be an assertion about the fundamentalist God. So what? Everyone thinks fundamentalists are off their rocker. It's my experience that most Americans these days believe in more amorphous, less tangible forms God - forms that I find hard to argue with because little is claimed with certainty, or because the fuzzy beliefs are compatible with the world I perceive, even if they wouldn't survive Occam's Razor (which only selects pragmatic theories, not truth).

    In my opinion, many of these modern amorphous, if contradictory, visions of God are potentially compatible with the universe I see. I don't find them useful, but I have no basis for concluding their falsehood, and who knows, one of these visions might possibly have some element of truth in it. It's for this reason that I prefer to call myself an agnostic. I find that most atheist can't allow themselves to acknowledge that any notion that anyone calls "God" could have any chance of harboring truth.

    We really need a strong set of definitions for the various flavors of non-belief. The terms we have even engender confusion among non-believers.

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  2. Massimo,

    I appreciation your very revealing statement:

    "to become “converted” ... to atheism is, indeed, inspiring. It’s extremely liberating to realize that there is no Big Guy in the sky watching over your every move (particularly, for reasons that are not at all clear, the moves you make in the privacy of your own bedroom)."

    I think that your sentiments - liberation from God - are foundational to atheism. God is seen as an oppressive reality. Jesus explained it this way:

    • “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.” (John 7:7)

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  3. @Manns Word,

    What may be foundational is 'Liberation from irrationality'.

    "God is seen as an oppressive reality". Really??? Oppressive UNreality, perhaps.

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  4. This sort of philosophizing really aggravates me. It reminds me of how Aristotle observed that women had fewer teeth.

    A man cannot form rational and philosophical arguments in a vacuum, yet so many attempt to do so. It's not philosophy, it's naval-gazing. Worse yet, it undermines the credibility of the study.

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  5. “An atheist is someone who not only doesn't believe in God, but believes, with some confidence, that there isn’t a God.” Oh no, it ain’t! That certainly describes some atheists, but not others. I, for instance, tend to stick to the etymology of the term, a-theism, meaning without a positive belief in god(s), so I consider myself an a-theist in pretty much the same manner in which most people are a-unicornists: they don’t believe in unicorns, not because they know that there aren’t any, but simply because they see neither evidence nor reason to hold that particular belief."

    Debates about this can be interminable, so I will just say what I think, and leave it at that. I think Perry's definition is right and it certainly is common in philosophy. Perhaps it's bothering you because of an ambiguity in the phrase "with some confidence." Colloquially, this means "with quite a lot of confidence," but what Perry means (or should mean, anyway) is "with some confidence or other." An atheist believes there no god, just as a theist believes there is a god; on both sides of the spectrum there can be varying degrees of confidence.

    I don't think atheists are well defined simply as not believing in God (etymology be damned--it will often steer you wrong) because that implies that agnostics are atheists too. (Not to mention that it makes babies and dogs atheists.) You might say ok to that, and say agnosticism is that special kind of atheism that says no evidence can possibly be acquired to support belief either way. But this just doesn't describe those people who call themselves agnostic. First, self-described agnostics don't usually think they're atheists, and second, agnostics are often not that epistemologically sophisticated. They don't necessarily think they could never take a position, but only that they don't have one *yet*.

    I think agnostics are simply defined as not believing in god (again, etymology be damned)--they have no position; and atheists as believing there is no god, while theists believe there is a god. When you emphasize that atheists believe that there is no god *with some (great or small) degree of confidence*, all worries about these definitions disappear. You get a nice set of mutually exclusive terms whose definitions match the way most people use them.

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  6. archwright, I'm really puzzled by your comment, what are you referring to, can you elaborate?

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  7. Phil,

    I suspect that "liberation from irrationality" would fail to impart that sense of liberation that many atheists describe. Instead, I think it is as Massimo described it: liberation from the "Big Guy in the sky watching over your every move."

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  8. mufi, sorry, I'm not going to follow you there. You are essentially advocating the position that might makes right. Which means you abdicate any rational discourse in ethics. This isn't a matter of *convincing* Hitler, it is a matter of figuring out if by beating the crap out of him we are doing the right thing or just indulging in arbitrary slaughter. I think the difference is pretty darn clear.

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  9. First off, I do not worry about "atheism" that much. There are more important discussions to be having.



    But, and I know this is a long going argument and one that you like to stand firm on, but the difference in your second paragraph seems rather trivial.



    If we take a box with a ball in it. You inspect the box, see it is empty, I put the ball in the box close it, then take the ball out of the box and close it again; and ask you, "Is there a ball in the box?". The difference between "I believe there is not a ball in the box" and the "Box is empty" is a rather silly distinction to be made. Sure, you cannot have full confidence that some miracle "quantum" process or some hand-of-god has not put a ball into the box, but for you to therefore say; "oh, oh, oh, it is absurd of you to say that the "box is empty" since you cannot "know" the box is empty without seeing inside of it," was a semantic conundrum that most of us (rightly and pragmatically, and, yes, problematic to logic) glossed over long ago.



    If the contents of that box were important for how we were to live our life or structure society, we would not hesitate to go around and say the "box is empty," even though that is only "officially" an inference from pragmatic consideration instead of "absolute knowledge" that the box is empty.



    I can't help but to see the "strident" atheist as merely saying the "box is empty" as it applies to "Does God exist," and doing so, yes, of course, with less evidence than we believe in empty boxes given certain situations, but still with enough pragmatic import to not be hung up on the perfect framing of the language. I would say all mainstream, big-name atheist have been well-beat over the head with the idea that the claim "there is no god" is logically problematic in the strictest sense.



    I always found Skinner's finagling of language to be rather problematic, but I feel like he would pull the trick here and say that when an individual says, "The box is empty," all they really mean is that "Given the prior empirical and theoretic knowledge that I hold, I believe the box is empty." I think that is a sleight-of-hand, that is that we infer a more convoluted meaning to what is a fairly straight-forward statement by an individual, but maybe something of the such is necessary here.

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  10. Lyndon, the problem is that when the box is the entire space-time (and beyond!) you simply cannot open it up and say, "see? it's empty!"

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  11. Thank you, Massimo, even though I never saw my atheism as liberation from the "Big Guy in the sky watching over your every move." Maybe that's because I started out as a Baptist. Baptist's don't preach guilt. Yes, it was a liberation, but the liberation was from ignorance.

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  12. I just noticed that myself and will try to correct it (or concede).

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  13. Massimo:
    As readers of this blog know, I am an atheist and yet I have some problems with the so-called “new atheism” (mostly that it isn’t new at all, and that it has a tendency to be unnecessarily obnoxious). Indeed, when asked, I prefer to use the term secular humanist to succinctly describe my philosophical position.

    I agree with this. I like to approach it as becoming a "fulfilled human being" rather than a "fulfilled atheist." As you imply, the word "atheist" has very little to it. Simple non-belief in god(s) is not something I want to tie my personal identity and fulfillment to. I identify with a lot other things that I think are more important. For instance, I would probably find more values and attitudes in common with a Christian Green Party supporter than I would an atheist Ayn Rand style libertarian. Likewise, I'm also greatly turned off by atheists acting like bishops who ex-communicate "heretics" from their "non-churches."

    I think I have a different view on human relationships, fulfillment and society than other secularists. I think that through thousands of years of human beings developing societies and relationships, I think it's reasonable to infer that religious teachings had at least gathered some insights about human nature, happiness and fulfillment through trial and error (I just disagree with them that their insights were divinely inspired). For that reason, I'm more in favour of a dialogue with religious people rather than castigating them or smugly implying that we have some sort of intellectual superiority over them.

    Anyways, that's my view. Massimo, perhaps that's not where you'd sit precisely but I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

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  14. But, the state that we are asking about is when it is closed, and when it is closed one cannot know, with perfect logical precision, that the "box is empty." It is that use of language that is analagous in this situation.

    Now, yes, we will easily get confirmation, and because we experience so many other similar, simple feats, we are comfortable in claiming the "emptiness" of the box even when it is closed and beyond our view. And, we usually, when people make such reasonable claims, do not constantly hound them to clean up their language.

    The situation with "God" is different in complexity and the fact that we will never open that box, even if we have shot down some of the more empirical claims that some in the past have attached to "God." You say you are an a-unicornist and probably an "a-santa clause", but when someone has to tell their child when they ask, "Santa does not exist," they do so appropriately and pragmatically without worry of the violation of proving the negative existence of Santa, because they fully accept that Santa Clause was a human construct.

    I think it is fair to say that Ivan Karamazov or Luke Skywalker do not exist as real people, even though Dostoevsky or Lucas could have "accidentally" created fictional characters that happened to exist in the world, whose non-existence we cannot prove.

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  15. Lyndon, I'm not sure I disagree with much of what you say, except that when we are talking about philosophical issues among supposedly sophisticated adults I think we are in a different ballpark (and therefore should adhere to different standards of discourse) than when we tell children that Santa doesn't exist. Right?

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  16. I think it gets into an empirical and theoretical analysis of intentionality.

    We are comfortable claiming the "non-existence" of Santa because we see it so prima facie as a construct of human beings. That is we infer the intentional creation of others of this "idea" or of these beings. That is why we have no qualms saying Luke Skywalker did not exist in a galaxy far away a long time ago- which may be as hard to disprove as most conceptions of God.

    Even you, I believe, are more comfortable making claims that Joseph Smith did not talk to god, Jesus was not the son of God, and that the anthropomorphic and interactive "god" of the Old Testament probably did not exist.

    The deistic image of god is impossible to disprove because of multiple epistemological and logical issues, and from there you claim that others over step boundaries of claiming non-existence. But, if what such individuals are doing is claiming that such an idea or such a being was so obviously the intentional construct of other humans, then by saying that "god does not exist" they are as much rejecting the postulation of god because of its constructed nature as they are contesting the idea in itself.

    Again, we contest the existence of Luke Skywalker not based on the evidence or lack of evidence of Skywalker at all, but because of why such a "being" as Skywalker was postulated in the first place.

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  17. Which will take us full circle for me. I would say that some of the most important denouncements of "God" come from history, anthropology, creative writing, and from developmental psychology. As we understand how and why a mind believes what it does, why it postulates what it does, how society creates and limits mental life, what "intentional" stances an individual takes, we are gaining "evidence" for and against certain objects.

    That is, our epistemological stance is being shaken by the psychological grounding of our reasoning and of logic. History and anthropology helps us see the myriad of intentional stances taken towards different deities. And, when we get to that last deity, that deity of the Deistic God, we have long discounted all these other obviously created gods that human societies and individual brains have cranked out. And, we then take a firm stand, that even that deity that is most difficult and impossible to disprove, was surely only the intentional manifestation and creation of human brains that were not ready to engage in theoretical postulations through complex language.

    This deeper understanding of the history of human beings and of any one individual we consider as solid enough evidence to claim the "box is empty" even if we cannot see inside of it, or only see the smallest portion of it.

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  18. Excellent, spot on.
    One of the great benefits of framing beliefs in terms of subjective probabilities is that one naturally avoids all this silly logic chopping about "positive beliefs" vs "lack of a belief" or whatever. Just state a rough probability (1000 to 1) and have done with it.
    It seems that a lot of people are doing an affective death spiral around atheism as a full-on worldview, as opposed to a single propositional claim that would be rather boring if it's opposite were not so widely held. In a counterfactual world of unicornists, a-unicornism is important; but not otherwise.

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  19. “Granted all of that, doesn’t it still seem strange to define one’s life by a negative claim, by the non-existence of something."

    I think Perry is only describing a relatively small but vocal cadre of rapid proselytizing atheists. Atheism defines *my* life no more than a-leprechaunism--not at all. Along the lines of ianpollock's insightful comment above, only in the context of widespread theism would someone suppose that atheism is life-defining. One's views on trinitarianism vs. unitarianism is less likely to define someone in Israel than in a Christian nation.

    Regarding agnosticism v. atheism I continue to struggle with the dichotomy. Why is God-belief different from unicorn-belief? As Lyndon pointed out, these are categorically equivalent postulations.

    @Joseph T. Lapp -- I think Occam's razor is not about pragmatism but parsimony. Adding complexity increases the burden of proof required to substantiate a claim. The addition of theoretical constructs for without additional explanatory power (or evidence) is simply unnecessary and can go on ad infinitum. Why stop with one God? How about two Gods? Or two Gods and a unicorn? Someone please correct me if my understanding is flawed.

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  20. Massimo, this is an eminently clear response to each of Perry's mischaracterizations. My frustration (literally groaning at my iPad for most of the podcast) has now settled into mere bafflement: surely these folks are educated and perceptive enough to recogize such fundamental categorical and definitional errors? Apparently not so much. - Marc@EA

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  21. russell's essay can be found here

    your position seems to be one of "i'll have my non-faith, and you have your faith and we can happily coexist in a civil way"?
    my view is that that it is never simply a matter of someone believing in a god that started the clockwork going, it is always accompanied by matters dogma and other matters of faith that are pervasive and detrimental to the rights of others. religion is the basis of a lot of homophobia, laws against abortion, not to mention general violence in the name of religion and academic ignorance and...
    i think it is the duty of every atheist to be at least somewhat vocal.

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  22. Massimo,

    Nice post. As you know, there's been a good deal of back-and-forth about the usefulness of "atheist" as a label. I tend to find your etymological approach appealing, but unfortunately quite a few people have used the term to indicate a broader moral and political program, which has tended to reinforce a number of common social biases.

    I'm struck, though, that your examples don't leave as much room for neutrality as you might like. Consider that the a-unicornist tends not to be neutral about the general question of the broader existence of unicorns. The a-unicornist may consider that he knows rather precisely the identity conditions of unicorn-kind, and for that very reason deny that anything in this world answers their description. (Under a program of methodological naturalism, we shouldn't count the discovery of some strange new breed of horned equine-looking thing--on this planet or any other--as a "unicorn" unless we were able to find some appcopriate causal link between these creatures and our own historical tales.) So the a-unicornist isn't strictly neutral about the existence of unicorns--she knows what people have in mind when they think of them, and denies that the conception has been preceded by any intuition (as Kant might put it).

    Similar remarks apply, I'd say, to atheism. The problem, of course, is that the concept of "God" lacks any rigorous set of identity conditions. The nearest "good faith" case for an atheist to make, given this state of affairs, is that insofar as the identity conditions of a god have been specified, there is simply no good reason to think that anything in the world matches them. This keeps the burden of proof where it belongs--with those arguing for the positive claim--while also eschewing the ontological grab-baggery that flies under the banner of speculative theology. It also leaves room for the theist's beef--which is surely right!--that atheists don't think their particular version of god exists. Atheists shouldn't be in the business of judging gods. That, after all, is just the stupid nonsense they're being--however indirectly--accused of in comments like Perry's. But they should still be gleefully free to call out people for indulging in wish fulfillment fantasies.

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  23. Massimo -

    “When you’re converted to atheism, the world goes from meaningful to meaningless, from caring to uncaring, from hopeful to hopeless.” Bullshit on stilts.

    I think it depends on the milieu within which one was raised, combined with one's temperament.

    For example, I was born into born-again Christianity, and I grew up believing in a literal interpretation of the Bible. I never thought to question any of it until I went to college and experienced people of different faiths (and no faith), as well as my first real experience with philosophical thought and philosophical traditions.

    I went through a period of a quasi-nihilism before embracing what Nietzsche called "amor fati" - love of Fate, or love of one's fate.

    Do you know of any book or serious study of individuals who profess themselves to be atheists and who describe not only their background but also their 'definition' of atheism?

    Juno

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  24. So...Hindu atheists believe in 329,999,999 gods?

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  25. @ResCognitans,

    "my view is that that it is never simply a matter of someone believing in a god that started the clockwork going. . ."

    I have a problem with the idea of a God even as simply the prime mover. The reason that dogma is always attached is that the introduction of God is meaningless without it. Believing that God created the Big Bang and has no bearing on anything after that renders the whole notion of God meaningless in my opinion. Might as well believe that a unicorn did it or just admit that this is an unsolved (and likely unsolvable) mystery.

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  26. I'm so tired of people who aren't atheists defining what atheism is. Then when an atheist critiques Christianity they claim we just don't understand it.

    We have no catechism, no parochial schools, no pope, no Bible, nothing at all to unify or define us other than a non-quality. I think when they go on about what they think we believe they're practicing psychological projection. Using the word "converted" is a tip-off that a little projection is happening there.

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  27. “An atheist is someone who not only doesn't believe in God, but believes, with some confidence, that there isn’t a God.”

    I have no problem with this definition. I think I am up to 99.9999999% sure there is no God, but it will never be 100% because in order to be sure I'd have to be omniscient and I'm not. What irks me is the people who say that atheists are those who assert that there is a 100% chance that there is no God for which multiple problems of proof arise. There could be gods in some other galaxy for example. Best guess is all we get, not certainty.

    It’s extremely liberating to realize that there is no Big Guy in the sky watching over your every move

    Clearly it was for you but it might not be so for others. Some certainly like the feeling that they are important enough to be watched over. A very parental metaphor. And there are always the exhibitionists who might like it. No shortage of those as Youtube will affirm.

    Meaning doesn’t come from without, it is constructed by us through our reflections on the world and our interactions with fellow human beings.

    Mostly true, but you can find meaning in the interaction with pretty much anything. We each decide where our meaning lies. Many find meaning interacting with animals for example and I find meaning in hiking up mountains even if I am alone.

    I have always been, and continue to be, very hopeful, both in terms of my personal life (the next exciting thing is likely just around the corner, if I keep looking!) and about humanity in general.

    Really? That was a somewhat surprising statement because you don't come across as hopeful (at least to me). You come across as profoundly disgruntled by the irrationality and rapacity of our species. Perhaps you should do a post about what you are hopeful about and why. I make that suggestion with all sincerity and without snark.

    That can be depressing, we all must admit.” No, we don’t. I was so ecstatic after reading Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian (I was about 15 or so), that I could hardly contain my exuberance. Depressing my ass.

    What he said was that it CAN be depressing not that it MUST be depressing. I am with him on this one. How people react to the conclusion that there are no gods depends entirely on their inherent nature. Celebrating or blowing your head off are both possible and what ultimate arbiter says one reaction is more valid than the other?

    I am not sure that the religion and flourishing argument is quite as clear cut as you imply. If nothing else religions encourage socialization where atheism either does not or does much less and I think you'd account human interaction as necessary or at least compatible with flourishing. Even if religion vanished overnight there would still be plenty of roadblocks to human flourishing there in that bright morning.

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  28. It riles me when people assume that atheists hold particular views. Is it the global influence of religion that forces people to adopt the pre-emptive mindset that the meaning of life must be to do with a deity, either one that is believed in or one that isn't? I'd like to think that there's more to it than that. I wouldn't mind so much but a lot of people seem to hold this opinion. Creationists in particular seem keen to point out that atheists believe that we are 'decended from monkeys' and that 'everything came from nothing'. No. Many atheists do believe in the theory of evolution and the big bang but this can't be a prerequisite for not believing in a deity!

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  29. Juno, there are many books by former atheists, one of my favorite is: http://goo.gl/2Xjuf

    unknown,

    > you regard as the absolute objective standard of human flourishing ... on which we are weaned in the West, and which existed nowhere in the world before the 17th century. <

    As I keep saying, that way of thinking traces back to Aristotle (yes, despite his penchant for aristocratic living), and has parallels in other cultures. You really ought to give him a break and read him seriously.

    > Are you truly not aware that there are groups like say Orthodox Jews versus Italian gangsters that live by very different standards of conduct and are capable by any objective indicators "flourishing"? <

    I have absolutely no trouble saying that other cultures are not doing it right, and those are perfect examples. And the Italian Mafia, really? Would you like joining them? Or the Orthodox Jews, and then report back to us about how well you are flourishing?

    > the crux of your ideal is that there is no telos - there is no natural order of ends, there is only freedom from violent death and material comfort. This is the point of liberty in the modern sense - protection from violence. <

    Bullshit, my friend. Of course there is no telos, but what I import from Aristotle is the idea of a general common human nature (yes, yes, with many variants within, of course). That nature make people - if they are not shackled by Orthodox Jewish traditions or members of the Italian Mafia - to pursue far more than just protection from violence.

    > I am pointing out that it is naive and unphilosophical to cite "human flourishing", i.e. the good life, as if this were some readily verifiable scientific fact <

    Here we go again with one of the readers of this blog who disagrees with me and moves into assault position: now I am philosophically naive, at times I don't understand the theory of evolution. I am well aware that the concept of flourishing is controversial, though not quite as much as you seem to think. You might want to check this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/ But it is, I think, a very viable concept to frame these kinds of discussions.

    Oh, and please do remember that this is a blog, not a scholarly journal in ethical philosophy.

    > How could modern science ever verify Aristotle's ethics, if they were in fact true, when his ethics is grounded in an unvarying standard of the beautiful and the noble which has no "scientific" meaning <

    Did you actually reflect on anything I wrote at all? Who ever said anything about science verifying Aristotle's ethics? I have written several times on RS about how idiotic Sam Harris' idea that science can determine ethics actually is. I said that modern cognitive science - across cultures, by the way (though to be fair, Orthodox Jews and the Mafia were not included in the surveys) - shows that people tend to have similar conceptions of the good life, conceptions that are not far removed from Aristotle's idea of eudaimonia. His ethics *follows* from the idea of eudaimonia, but the latter is empirically verifiable.

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  30. Massimo, what do you think about theological noncognitivism and the ignostic types who argue that the concept of "god" is incoherent or not worth discussing unless a particular kind of definition of "god" is offered by theists?

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  31. Michael Labeit,

    > what do you think about theological noncognitivism and the ignostic types who argue that the concept of "god" is incoherent or not worth discussing unless a particular kind of definition of "god" is offered by theists? <

    I am very sympathetic to that view, which is why I disagree with Dawkins and Coyne that science can refute "the god hypothesis." "god" is too incoherent a concept to raise to the level of hypothesis, in any meaningful sense of the term, and certainly in the scientific one.

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  32. I think Richard Dawkins does not that bad. He seems to me a honest and reasonable person. I think the difference is that he makes proselitysm, namely, he wants to kind of convert people to atheism. But, well, monotheistic religions do it as well. He is just more beligerant, an activist.

    Bu I like him, he seems passionate about what he does. I don't know, I don't see him that bad...Of course, all of this does not mean that we does is the right thing to do, but anyway, it seems that there is an ongoing debate about him and this or that related to him, and he related with this or that one. And goes on and on...

    About the post, yeah, it is nice.

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  33. Oscar, I never said Dawkins was bad, just philosophically misguided.

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  34. "“An atheist is someone who not only doesn't believe in God, but believes, with some confidence, that there isn’t a God.” Oh no, it ain’t! That certainly describes some atheists, but not others."

    Your reasoning is circular here.

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  35. I think beliefs should be supported by knowledge: empiricism and rationalism. Empirically, god is an impossible belief because some entity that’s less than a god would be capable of meeting any empirical evidence required of a god. So, if some entity claims to be god, and you ask it to prove that claim by doing something you think only a god could do, like, for example: create a new universe. It’s more likely that that entity is manipulating your sensory input rather than actually creating that universe. Rationally, god is also impossible because there isn’t any premise that you can start from to show that a thing exists without connecting it to something that maps with reality as you know it. That means you need empiricism at some point to create a rational argument for the existence of something. Imagine a person born without any sensory input: how could that person make a sound argument for the existence of anything outside their sensory input? So, if you accept that your beliefs should be supported by knowledge, then I think you should also accept that god is an impossible belief, and not just a potential belief that is currently lacking reason or evidence.

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  36. "It’s extremely liberating to realize that there is no Big Guy in the sky watching over your every move..."

    A week or so before you wrote this article I expressed similar sentiments that 'converting' to atheism set me free. The paragraph quoted below is from the last entry I wrote on a blog where I archived news reports on religion related child abuse. I also wrote an entry on another blog, lamenting that no one had shown me Bertrand Russel's tract "Why I am not a Christian" when I was a young teen. It could have saved me decades of exploitation and abuse by the evangelical Christian cult that recruited me when I was 16. The links to both blog posts are below.

    "Keeping this archive updated has not been easy. It can be quite depressing reading daily about innocent children who are indoctrinated, mistreated, exploited, assaulted, molested, raped, tortured or murdered, or are denied their human rights, either directly or indirectly because of religion. However, contrary to the popular misconception held by many believers, it is religiously motivated child abuse that depresses me, not the atheistic worldview I now hold, which provides more morality, meaning and purpose to my life than Christianity ever did because it is based on reality. So, that is one reason I'm ending this archive. I cry inside every time I read another story of children suffering because of the religious beliefs of adults. Sometimes I just can't bear to read another one. It's getting too hard on my heart."

    http://religiouschildabuse.blogspot.com/2011/07/snapshot-of-religion-related-child.html

    http://perry-bulwer.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html

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  37. Thoughtful post, Massimo, but I don't see why you have trouble with the definition "An atheist is someone who not only doesn't believe in God, but believes, with some confidence, that there isn’t a God.” Isn't that what the wise man does, proportioning his belief to the evidence, with appropriate levels of confidence? I haven't browsed through all the comments, but I see Jean Kazez has brought this up already.

    I'm wondering, what level of confidence do you have? Wouldn't you be among those who are even more confident than Dawkins & co. about God's non-existence, as you think that the whole concept is plainly incoherent? Dawkins at least allows for the possibility of God's existence, even if he thinks it is vanishingly small. You, on the other hand, seem to think of God as akin to a round triangle.

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  38. Well put, Massimo. I like this positive approach to Humanism a lot.

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  39. "I am very sympathetic to that view, which is why I disagree with Dawkins and Coyne that science can refute "the god hypothesis." "god" is too incoherent a concept to raise to the level of hypothesis, in any meaningful sense of the term, and certainly in the scientific one"

    I applaud this veritable apotheosis of perspicacity -- an astonishing aberration in this, the Age of Ditchkins.

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  40. Gres,

    how exactly is my reasoning circular? Would you mind reconstruct it and point out the circularity?

    Maarten,

    I can't possibly be more confident than Dawkins on anything, he's the uber-confident of atheism. Yes, I do think that god concepts are essentially incoherent, which - to paraphrase something that has recently be used for string theory - the "god hypothesis" is not even wrong...

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  41. Atheism is a "negative" label, a-theism being "not" Theism, for a "world and life view" that simply does not include a Deity as it does not include numerous other things. I don't think that means it is oriented around "not believing something". Although that is how Theism frame it to make it "negative".

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  42. Massimo,
    If you think that God (or string theory) does not even reach the level of wrongness, doesn't that mean that you're lending it even less credibility than those who simply think it is conceivable but wrong? Dawkins gives a seven-stage belief spectrum in the God Delusion, and he doesn't place himself at the far end (so no absolute confidence). I'm still wondering if you would bet your life on it, or your mother's soul (I would).
    In response to McGrath's objection that you one cannot disprove God, Dawkins writes that it is an "undeniable but ignominiously weak point". So he does know how far he can go.
    I know I'm teasing you again to show that you have more in common with Dawkins than you seem willing to admit. :-)

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  43. Hi. My first visit here for a while.

    There may be some difficulties with the concept of God, but I don't think it's so incoherent as to be useless. God is generally understood to be at least a supernatural intelligent being that created the universe, and I can quite reasonably define my atheism with respect to that conventional conception of God. In my opinion no such God exists, so I'm an atheist. I don't have to define my atheism with respect to every single meaning that anyone has ever given to the word "God".

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  44. :-) Thanks for this post Massimo. I'm pleased (if a little surprised) to read you using the no-evidence argument.

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  45. Maarten,

    I have always said that I agree with much of Dawkins' positions (on atheism, not so much with his take on biological reductionism). But I also think his in-your-face approach is misguided, and that he is philosophically naive. That's all...

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  46. I just read this:

    "This isn't a matter of *convincing* Hitler, it is a matter of figuring out if by beating the crap out of him we are doing the right thing or just indulging in arbitrary slaughter. I think the difference is pretty darn clear."

    Beautiful. This paragraph would cut the Gordian knot in about 90% of metaethical arguments.

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  47. Massimo wrote:

    "how exactly is my reasoning circular?"

    Because you criticized the definition of "atheist" by saying:

    "That certainly describes some atheists, but not others."

    This statement presumes the very definition of "atheist" under discussion, hence it's circular.

    Regardless, I don't think you can say any particular definition is right or wrong; definitions are determined by people who use the words. Neither does the etymology of the word matter much; many words have accepted definitions that are pretty far removed from their roots.

    The best that can really be said on the subject is that people who label themselves as "atheist" hold a spectrum of views on the likelihood of the existence of any supernatural creator.

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  48. Greg,

    that's not at all circular reasoning, I was simply making your very same point that "atheism" is an umbrella term that describes a continuum of positions. As for etymology, I think it is helpful, not as a prescriptive source, but to indicate that the word *can* or even *did* historically mean X, and that it is therefore not at all out of place for me to defend X.

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  49. @KenG: re Hindu atheists and the graphic "Atheism: Believing in one less god than you...." - Believe in an infinite amount of gods? - You may or may not be an atheist.

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  50. Having been drummed out of more atheist clubs than I can count. The only reasonable definition of atheist is one who lives as if God is irrelevant. I don't care if God exists or not. If someone needs God for some reason God bless them. I get my mores from society just like God does, I just choose different societies in general than God does to extract my mores from. I also spend more time thinking about which mores make sense and which don't. But in general my Educated Rational Social Support Group provides a decent set.

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  51. I am an atheist who agrees with Professor Pigliucci that we cannot know that God does not exist and that unicorns do not exist. Yet, unlike Professor Pigliucci, I also believe, "with some confidence, that there isn’t a God." I am an atheist for precisely the same reason as Professor Pigliucci: because I "see neither evidence nor reason to hold that particular belief." If there is neither reason nor evidence to believe that something exists, then, in matters other than God, one does not view it as a tossup. One assumes, with some confidence, albeit tentatively, that it doesn't exist. Doesn't Professor Pigliucci believe, with some confidence, that unicorns don't exist? Then why not the same with respect to God?

    's reason
    Oh no, it ain’t! That certainly describes some atheists, but not others. I, for instance, tend to stick to the etymology of the term, a-theism, meaning without a positive belief in god(s), so I consider myself an a-theist in pretty much the same manner in which most people are a-unicornists: they don’t believe in unicorns, not because they know that there aren’t any, but simply b

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  52. @ Joesph Lapp "It's my experience that most Americans these days believe in more amorphous, less tangible forms God - forms that I find hard to argue with because little is claimed with certainty, or because the fuzzy beliefs are compatible with the world I perceive" - This might be your experience, but you're using it to draw a very general argument about atheists. Polling data (as well as my experience) is suggesting the opposite, that many, if not most, Americans hold often very strong religious views, views which may not include total, absolute, truth in the biblical account of humanity/divine, but which include some large amount of truth to it. Creationism for example is still a very strong influence upon American society.

    Arguing, sometimes forcefully, against such things is as a result still an important function for atheists, even if it does not get down to the more difficult and pressing questions of parsing out lesser confidence of belief or belief in lesser forms of deities than the "personal god" defined in the Abrahamic tradition that most Americans (according to polls) still hold to in some form or another. It's certainly true that this is not a universally held belief by theists, and that this definition is less popular in say, Europe (the Nordic countries in particular). But to suggest that it's somehow not the predominant position and experience is to ignore some considerable evidence to the contrary. Simply moving more people away from that belief and into the more vague position you describe is elevating some rational thought and examination of evidence in the public mind and would seem a worthy cause.

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  53. Hi Professor,

    First, I want to make sure that I understand your position. I believe what you are saying is that human beings live in a world without a telos, and rather, we self-authenticate by giving meaning to lives with our interaction with others.

    Second, I can discern that you are a secular humanist. I am too, but I am agnostic rather than atheist. Considering this, mutatis mutandis, do you think that our viewpoints as secular humanists would be greatly different?

    If so, in what ways?

    Also, the reason I became agnostic from being a atheist is that I realized that my position as an atheist was seemingly just as dogmatic as insisting that there was a god(s) -- a kind of reverse dogmatism, if you will. I would appreciate your insight in reconciling these matters that always seem to be subject to revisions as I get older.

    Dennis

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  54. Dennis,

    you got the gist right. And I don't think my positions as a secular humanist would be different from those of an agnostic. However, it is precisely to avoid the problem you refer to that I distinguish between a-theism (similar to a-unicornist, not dogmatic) and Atheism (dogmatic, or likely more so).

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  55. Thanks for the clarification, Professor. I'll take a closer look at the distinction.

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