Introduction to the Topic
Were atheism a religion, it would be the third most popular religion in the world. Over a billion people claim no godly commitments. In the United States, nonbelief would be the second most popular religion, with more membership than Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism combined.1 Yet in the U.S., atheism is viewed in a particularly negative light, and has been described as the last great civil rights battle. It can still cost you a job, a friend, a scholarship, or an election.2 Self-identifying as an atheist has been known to invoke vitriol, threats, hate speech through social media, and hate crimes in our institutions of higher learning. It is a view (or lack thereof) that has been demonized and oppressed, in many places for centuries, despite the fact that many atheists rank among the most tolerant, educated, and moral of people.3 The contemporary nonbeliever in the U.S. must struggle for acceptance, even tolerance, and must frequently confront the absolutely bizarre (yet extremely common) assumptions that atheism somehow entails immorality, irrationality, antagonism, or anarchy.
Tolerance begins in understanding, and understanding is the primary goal of Atheism Considered. It is not written with the intent to convert or to provoke. This work is, among other things, a call to tolerance, understanding, and meaningful dialogue. But because atheism in the U.S. is the minority position, even to the point of being countercultural, the best way to understand the view is by seeing it through the atheistās eyes, to show why the position should be considered eminently reasonable, and that it therefore need not remain constantly on the defensive. The book attempts this task in part by analyzing and evaluating the standard justifications and assumptions of theism. It will first show that the standard philosophical supports in favor of the various theisms are unpersuasive, and that an appeal to revealed sources is even more problematic. But beyond this dearth of good reasons to accept the existence of a higher power, there are also compelling reasons that speak against such theistic views and that therefore motivate the rejection of religion. Lastly, there are many additional considerations that speak in favor of a naturalistic worldview.
However, this book is not intended to serve as a collection of fodder with which to cudgel theists. While it does present strong criticisms against various theistic viewpoints, it does so for the purpose of understanding and further reflection and investigation, not as ammunition. Atheists just as much as theists must guard against dogmatism. A dogmatist is someone who does not revise their view in light of evidence. Hence, were an atheist to accept any evidence in favor of nonbelief while ignoring any evidence that challenges their view, it would be just as dogmatic and unenlightened as the type of religious mindset that frequently chafes nonbelievers. For this reason and with deliberate irony, I refer to such dogmatic nonbelief as āfundamentalist atheism.ā Too many followers of the New Atheists take this tack. If you believe that theism entails manifest irrationality, or if you think that religion has never done anything valuable or that it only harms mankind, then this book is not for you. You may wish to reach instead for a text on critical thinking. Atheism Considered approaches and encourages the evaluation of all evidence rationally, carefully, and without bias, and is not written for those who simply refuse to do so, regardless of their metaphysical worldview.
Considered Nonbelief
Up to this point, I have used āatheistā and ānonbelieverā synonymously. This is an oversimplification that will have to be made precise in the next chapter, but for now it will suffice to say that the atheist or nonbeliever, in the intended sense, must be distinguished from both the believer and the agnostic. While agnostics do not believe there is a deity, they also do not believe that there is no deity. By contrast, when I use ānonbelieverā or āatheist in the popular sense,ā I mean an individual who has gone beyond mere agnosticism; one who, upon considering these matters, actively affirms the position that there is no deity, therefore making a much stronger claim than mere agnosticism. Hence, we may define a nonbeliever or atheist in the popular sense as someone who, upon reflection, denies the existence of any deity. Notice that this definition entails that the nonbeliever finds the sum of all considered reasons for belief insufficient, and further maintains that there is sufficient evidence against this position to merit the rejection of such beliefs rather than a mere suspension of belief. This is worth spelling out in more detail.
The considered nonbeliever must therefore not only possess rational grounds for the rejection of the purported evidence intended to support the existence of a deity, but must also hold that there are further, positive reasons for thinking there is no such being. This is because āI donāt believe xā is a very different claim than, āI believe not x.ā I donāt believe that it will be a sunny day four weeks from now. This is not because I believe it will be overcast. Instead, I simply hold no considered view about it. I have no compelling reason to think that it will be sunny or that it will not be sunny. When I consider the possibilities, I remain meteorologically agnostic. Thus, the fact that I do not believe it will be sunny four weeks from now in no way entails that I believe it will not be sunny four weeks from now. In order to arrive at the latter belief, I would need to be provided reasons that specifically support the view that it will not be sunny. For instance, I may look at what the Farmersā Almanac predicts for that day, or perhaps I realize that most years, that particular day is cloudy, etc. What this example is trying to convey is that arriving at considered nonbelief must be a two-step process. We must reject the reasons for saying that x is true, but we must also provide additional reasons why x is false (or, at minimum, show that the reasons to think x is false radically outweigh evidence to support that x is trueāsuch considerations will be discussed much more thoroughly in Chapters 2 and 4).
Synopsis of the Text
Atheism Considered progresses through this two-step movement. It presents the standard and influential reasons used to support belief and the rational rejection of such supports. But it then goes beyond this in presenting independent support for nonbelief. The text accomplishes this in six major parts. First, the introductory chapters set the conditions for belief and for the proper weighing of evidence. A major stumbling block for opening any type of dialogue between believers and nonbelievers is simply the failure to apply the common rules of logic, argument, and evidence. But such rules are vital and should be the starting point and framework for any pursuit of truth, religious or otherwise. Chapter 2 begins to build this common ground by clarifying terminology and disentangling the clusters of related views and commitments on these topics, after which it will establish some important components regarding methodology for this type of discussion. Chapter 3 will then begin the process of undoing centuries of demonization by examining the typical atheist from a sociological standpoint. The goal in these Chapters is simply to lay the groundwork for a fruitful dialogue. As the skeptical philosopher David Hume was reputed to have said, truth springs from disagreement amongst friends.
But before such a dialogue can begin, there is a final piece of groundwork that must be established, what we call the burden of proof. This must be brought in because equal plausibility of theses need not (and in many cases should not) be assumed in a given discussion. Some debates may start on equal footing, but this is generally the exception, rather than the rule. If someone were trying to convince me, for instance, that genocide is permissible, or that the world is flat, I do not begin by assuming that my opponentās starting point and my own are equally likely. It is not a coin-toss. Instead, my view holds a significant advantage before the discussion even begins and, as such, my opponent starts at a proportionate disadvantage. This is to say, my opponent starts with a burden that I do not. Hence, the burden of proof represents a disadvantageous starting position that must be overcome in order to even get the debaters to a fifty-fifty point. As such, before we can determine how much our views change based on the evidence presented, we must first determine who, if anyone, possesses the burden of proof, and how much of a disadvantage it entails. The goal of Chapter 4 is to establish this for the god debates. Only after we have completed these necessary steps and set the proper groundwork can we begin to present and evaluate the evidence properly.
The second major part of the book considers justifications for belief in a higher power grounded in natural theology. Roughly, natural theology pursues theological matters independently of any religious tradition or appeal to faith. Instead, the goal is to see what, if anything, can be learned using only the natural faculties (such as reasoning) and neutral evidenceāthat is, evidence accepted as evidence by all sides of a controversy. Hence, we can think of these chapters as examining what, if anything, reason and the sciences can tell us about these matters without bringing any religious commitments into it. Chapter 5 will start by first considering the role of reason in this type of inquiry. It will sort out which issues are matters of reason, and which are better classified as faith or revelation.
Once these matters have been sorted out, we will consider the three major families of arguments for the existence of a deity, traditionally known as the ontological, cosmological, and design arguments, discussed in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 respectively. These kinds of arguments try to establish that reason, metaphysics, or certain facts about the world imply the existence of some form of higher power. Though there are many such arguments in the history of philosophy, the focus of these chapters is not historical but will instead present general forms of the arguments. The question will be whether the acceptance of the assumptions motivating these arguments is reasonable and therefore whether their rejection makes an atheist irrational or epistemically irresponsible. Chapter 9 will bring together what we have learned regarding natural theology by drawing out and analyzing in more detail some of the key assumptions, and where they leave us regarding the god debates.
But as we discussed above, denying the success of these arguments may justify agnosticism, but in and of itself does not commit one to atheism. That would require further reasons for maintaining such a beingās existence is improb...