REVIEW: ATHEIST OVERREACH, WHAT ATHEISM CAN'T DELIVER BY CHRISTIAN SMITH
Christian Smith is Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. In his book he is rehashing worn out Christian objections to atheism. He claims that we see that atheists can do good but argues that they have no real compelling reason to be. This is presented as "nice" but is it? A person doing good but who wrecks the reasons for it is not good. He thinks atheists are not sticking to what they know but isn't that what he is doing himself? It depends on what a person reads and he clearly has not read well.
And his Jesus went on about evil generation and evil people
and did not pretend to think that the evil in a person does not
define them. Smith rejects the idea that you can tell if a
person's life is good or bad for that is over-simplifying. But
he knows nobody really does that. We mean a person is bad when
they do say one terrible thing such as a doctor killing a child
patient on purpose or generally bad. He explains that good is
complicated and you can do great harm in getting it wrong. So
like atheists then his Christian theology struggles with good too.
So why is he pretending any different? Why is he saying
atheism is too vague and weak on good to be commendable or
acceptable?
QUOTE: By my account, then, a good reason for being “good without God” must
entail both an explanation and a motivation for why people should be so. On this
point I part ways with rationalist Kantian ethics, which insists that warranting
explanations always contain their own justifying motivations, so that all any
person needs is a reasoned account for why an action is right or wrong, and that
ought automatically to motivate any rational person to conform to her duty of
obeying the moral law. I believe Kantians are misguided, and I maintain that a
truly good reason for moral actions requires both a warranting explanation and a
motivational justification.
COMMENT: Kant held that you can justify moral action without needing God for it
justifies itself.
Smith is saying that Kantianism is not giving you a desire based motive to be good like
belief in God might. But religion says God is very different from us.
He has all knowledge and does not even need to deliberate. To make it as
personal as Smith wants then do we need superhuman Gods like the Mormon God or
Thor? Yes. The atheist simply switches this fellow feeling from gods
to men. Gods are made in the image of men anyway. These gods are
just men with extra abilities.
By moral Kant meant that which is right in all times and places and is the opposite of what is wrong in all times and places. He said what is immoral is what stops the world functioning if everybody were to commit that action. But enough people do find the philosophy helpful even if not perfect. Are we talking preferences here? Clearly we are. We don't want a world where everybody lies. It is not true that Kant advocated a purely cognitive cold morality. The emotion is there underneath it all.
Morality and preferences are different things. Trying to
mix both together and calling it morality will not work.
QUOTE SAYING THAT NO ATHEIST MORALIST IS CLEAR ON WHAT GOOD MEANS: A few are
muddled and unclear. Sometimes they describe moral goodness with vague phrases
like “behaving ethically,” our “deepest values,” and helping others to “be more
of a person.”
COMMENT: Some say say, "We don't need definitional clarity. We know good when we
see it. We know that good is a default for even if there were nothing at all it
is good at least that we don't exist to suffer. It is bad in other ways but that
is not the point. Good is there still."
I'd put light grey where the word good is. Anything else is just
sophistry. It is not just atheists who have a problem with how muddled and
hazy good is.
QUOTE ABOUT WHY IF WE RECOGNISE A MORAL RULE WE WILL THINK ALL PEOPLE MUST
RESPECT THAT RULE:
Rebecca Goldstein’s reference to the philosopher Thomas
Nagel, who argues in his book The Possibility of Altruism that “logic commits us
to universalize . . . certain natural attitudes that already commit us to
valuing our own lives.” That is, we can reason that “we all know for ourselves
that there is a right or wrong . . . so from there only radical selfishness
could prevent us from understanding that these concepts are universal.” (Here we
appear to return to the Kantian view of having a “good reason” for acting
morally...) And, Epstein says, since selfishness leads to unhappiness (which
shifts back to a consequentialist ethics), that is not an option. Hence
universalism. “Ethics really isn’t that complicated,” Epstein concludes. Neither Kitcher’s nor Epstein’s arguments for universalism is remotely persuasive. They
may “convince” people who, for other (good or bad) reasons, already want to
believe in inclusive moral universalism without thinking too hard about it. But
convincing people who are already or mostly convinced is not the challenge. The
challenge is to convince reasonable skeptics.
COMMENT: The most important argument in the book is that atheists cannot come up
with a reason why moral rules apply to everybody regardless of what they believe
and think. In fact saying God has spoken and commands it, is not a reason
for there is no evidence.
The book accuses Kitcher and Epstein of trying to make out we should
simply assume on the basis of trust in their philosophy and what they say that
ethics applies to everybody. Epstein tries to force you to agree with him by
saying you are radically selfish if you do not. So our author says that atheist
moralities just have to resort to bullying to get you to agree that morality
applies to all people. In fact we could say most moralists bully for even
if say most Christians should have reasons for you, they never do.
QUOTE - ATHEISTS HAVE TO HIDE HOW ACTUALLY HUMAN AND GUESSED THEIR MORAL RULES
ARE: Yet if atheism is correct, human practices of ethics will function more
effectively if the general public remains in obfuscated darkness about
morality’s mere human origins and sheer functional purposes. People who believe
that their moral norms reflect objective standards of moral truth—what
philosophers call “moral facts”—will be more likely to uphold them than people
who see that they are mere human constructions that evolved to reduce social
conflicts and enhance general human well-being. The Great and Terrible Oz of
morality, so to speak, was only revered and obeyed.
COMMENT: True but it ignores the fact that we are forced to have an objective
morality anyway. It is not the atheists who are forcing. Even if you say no
moral rule is valid you are saying moral rules are immoral. If you say for
example that justice is just a lie you are saying it is unfair to
say anything else so you have a sense of justice after all even if
warped. See the point?
Conscience and objective morality force you to hear them. Even God has to live
with that! You cannot dump objective morality without replacing it with
another one. This is what matters. Not God. God cannot help
the problem and it is just unfair to say he can.
QUOTE REGARDING ATHEIST SAM HARRIS THAT BEING GOOD IS MORE NATURAL THAN WE
REALISE: Harris writes: “our selfish and selfless interest do not always
conflict.” True, but sometimes they do, and that is the problem at stake. Bayer
and Figdor claim that “pursuing [one’s own] happiness . . . can and do[es] lead
to ‘typical’ moral behavior” in part because “enlightened self-interest [means
that] prioritizing your own concerns can lead you to behave in a way that is
moral and beneficial for society.”True again. But just because it can lead to
that does not mean that it always will or should. They also write: “we choose to
act morally because our personal preferences are to act in that way."
COMMENT: Harris by encouraging one to match the two up and getting enough people
to do it could actually cause things overall to be for the best.
If we are very selfish but still unselfish most of the time, then the
morality that governs us may be imperfect rather than non-functional! Or we are
what is imperfect or non-functional. What then of the argument: "We can be
selfish or unselfish. The latter will bring real world results on us that
destroy us. Morality may not matter for nature forces things on us anyway
that would remind of what morality is like"? It has a point but does not prove
nature and morality are friends or not friends.
QUOTE: Officially, science is only methodologically naturalistic, not
metaphysically so, meaning that scientific methods and explanations only appeal
to natural causes but science makes no judgments about the nature of ultimate
reality.
COMMENT: Officially your blood test showing too much iron is only
methodologically naturalistic, not metaphysically so. Science
makes no judgement about whether the iron is the problem or some
spiritual and undetectable force in it. Really?
Smith assumes there
could be a spirit God or force that is outside of nature and that can exist
independently of it. Science does treat the natural as ultimate reality -
period! If you say you have something transcendent that agrees that some
tests be done or that it says something other-worldly skewed an experiment's
outcomes, science will run from your door. You will not be
entertained.
QUOTE: Evolution provides no moral orientation whatsoever. For many years
evolutionists believed that they could squeeze the doctrine of Progress out of
evolution. But it did not take long to realize that evolution is simply an
account of change, not progress or advance. Organisms do tend to “want” to
survive. But on evolutionary grounds per se we cannot say that it was morally
good or bad that the dinosaurs lived or died, for instance. It simply happened.
COMMENT: Evolution has no direct moral orientation. It is not about morality.
But morality is about changing yourself so evolution being about change is
accidentally moral.
QUOTE: I can imagine some saying “yes, but the time has come to extend our
cooperative capacities to the entire human race. We must learn global
cooperation if we as humans are to survive.” As an empirical fact, that may be
so (or it may not be—it is an empirical question). But even if it is empirically
true, still left unexplained in the claim are the reasons justifying the words
“entire” in the first sentence and “must” in the second sentence. Once again,
this claim presupposes what we actually need to explain and vindicate, namely,
the warranted moral force of a universalistic obligation.
COMMENT: There is no evidence that anybody who preaches we must make a better
world for all really means it. In reality everybody is selective. Actions
speak loudest.
Some might say you cannot call presupposing bad for we have to presuppose anyway
so we can just assume all people should be helped as far as possible.
And what kind of goodness are we going to give to all those people? The modest
goodness which the book says the atheist has, or a stronger more intense
goodness?
Modest goodness is a relative term. Doing good for strangers impresses
people but only you know if you are cutting corners. You can always do
better and do more. Thus the argument that Christians can do more than
modest good and atheists would not be expected to is superficial.
QUOTE: If and when people come to see these “morals” as mere social conventions,
the main thing that will then compel their conformity in action is the threat of
greater harm for not conforming. And that is not a prescription for sustaining a
robust culture of universal benevolence and human rights.
COMMENT: True. But this happens under Christian and Atheist cultures alike.
QUOTE: If reproductive fitness is enhanced by engaging in cooperative social
life, then that is good; if reproductive fitness is enhanced by antisocial
selfishness, then that is good too.
COMMENT: That is exactly what evolution and natural selection would say if they
could speak. If we cannot help it that we have to be social or
anti-social to reproduce, then reproducing is still good.
QUOTE: Utilitarianism is incapable on its own terms of explaining why anyone
should actually be committed to the happiness of the greatest number. Why
not—given utilitarianism’s assumption of hedonic individualism—simply be
concerned with one’s own pleasure and happiness and perhaps those of the other
people we care about?
COMMENT: We all benefit from people who think that way and always have. Is
that not enough?
And does it need to explain why? The idea is attractive and is that
not enough? Can we not say, "We should do it for we like it?" It
would be strange to say we should do it for we don't like it. My happiness
is threatened if others think Utilitarianism is wrong. Nobody can even
consider happiness important at all without considering the possibility of
making most happy is practical. It explains itself. It does explain
on its own terms.
QUOTE: Let us suppose that a version of Shafer-Landau’s case is correct in which
in reality only two (and no more) kinds of properties and facts exist:
(1) scientifically discoverable natural facts, and
(2) self-evident ethical facts
having no religious basis. That is, no divine, transcendent, or
(quasi-)religious property like karma exists, even though moral facts exist. We
would then have a version of Shafer-Landau’s self-evident moral realism that a nonnaturalist atheist could embrace, by accepting the reality of immaterial,
nonnatural moral facts while still rejecting the existence of God or other
religious entity related to those moral facts. Does that secure us universal
benevolence and human rights? The answer is: not now and probably not ever.
Shafer-Landau has not listed universal benevolence and human rights among the
moral facts he believes are self-evident, and I doubt he would ever attempt it.
Let us be clear: a vast distance separates “do not inflict pain on others for
your own pleasure” from “actively practice benevolence toward and champion the
human rights of all people everywhere, as you are able.” The first is
prohibitive and narrow, the second is proscriptive and globally expansive ...
COMMENT: That is back to the discredited argument that there seems to be no
reason to think we should do what we can with an eye to improving the whole
world for everybody. It is like arguing that if you chose lemon cake for
your tea there was no reason to refuse the alternative, the pancake.
CONCLUSION
We cannot avoid being grey as in harming and helping. All harm helps. All help harms. In that light there is nothing odd if an atheist says we should think of helping the whole world. If rules are grey we can affirm that as just another grey rule. Smith wants us to think it is stupid and flat out wrong if there is no God commanding universal love.
Good is a misleading term and riddled with notions of pure goodness and so on which are misleading. This book is thinking of good as in something that is like a part of a perfectly loving God. It is guilty of trying to prove that atheists cannot be very good based on its definition of good when it should be justifying that view of good in the first place. This is not done. No reasoning in circles please.
The last point is that saying the whole world should be helped has no practical value. It is only words. Look at what people do. Let action speak. Everybody is selective period. For some, the best way to improve the world is not to permeate their loving action all over the globe but to choose carefully who they will help. The world is improved if you help your bubble of five people even though they are not the whole world. See the point? Things are still better even if it is only in one bit. Being open to the whole world is not being open to the whole world. You cannot help everybody. So what you really have is a command that you must help all if you can. This is about intention. Intention is very internal and in this case it is about trying to approve of yourself without putting in the work.
How useful is our morality of love and justice anyway? The worst choices in life are nobody's to make but mine. For example, even if abortion is immoral, it is still only the person carrying the pregnancy who can choose. It is not for their god, their government, doctor or partner to choose. Who says that doing the right thing means doing the nice or attractive thing? That is not how it works Mr Smith.
Reviewed 18 Feb 2021 on Amazon