Thanks to the Cloud of Witnesses blog, I am Jonny King has come across a new paper that has been very recently published, which intersects with our “august” visitor to New Zealand, Richard Dawkins, which is described in the following way, on the Evangelical Philosophical Society blog…
My [Peter S. Williams] paper ‘The Emperor’s Incoherent new Clothes – Pointing the Finger at Dawkins’ Atheism’ has just been published in the latest edition of Think (Number 24, Volume 9, Spring 2010).
Think is a Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, edited by Stephen Law and published by Cambridge University Press.
I argue that Richard Dawkins’ ‘new atheism’ proffers self-contradictory ideas about moral value, knowledge and responsibility.
Is this man claiming Dawkins’ ideas are digressions from the Truth? Therefore, if impressive, will Dawkins’ ideas not set the reader free? It could well be so!
You are just going to have to continue and read this portion from the conclusion that deals to Dawkins and his cadre…
The purpose offered by the new atheism is counterfeit because naturalism is the pre-eminent metaphysics of nihilism. William Provine proclaims his atheistic creed: ‘There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death… There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either’.5 Dawkins likewise rejects God, inherent cosmic purpose, life after death and any objective value, as well as libertarian free will and responsibility:
As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.6
But how can anyone (e.g. a religious believer) be responsible for not living up to their intellectual obligations if they aren’t free to be responsible for anything in the first place? If everything about a person is ‘governed by the laws of physics’, blaming them for their intellectual failings would make as much sense as Newton blaming gravity for giving him an apple-sized bump on the head. Indeed, if all beliefs are caused by nothing but the laws of physics, how can we rationally privilege one effect of these laws (e.g. belief in atheism) over another (e.g. belief in theism)?
The Emperor’s rhetorically fine new clothes are logically incoherent; which is as much as to say that they have no substance in the land of truth. Despite appearances, the Emperor is naked. Agnostic John Humphrys is ready to take up the call of Hans Christian Andersen’s innocent child in the crowd:
The atheists… must prove, rather than merely assert, that mainstream religion is a malign force in the world [but how can they do this whilst denying any objective reality to moral malignancy?]. They cannot rely on a small minority of religious extremists to do that for them or hark back to the brutality of earlier centuries. And they must offer an alternative to the millions who rely on their beliefs to make sense of their lives [but how can they do this whilst denying any objective reality to our intellectual obligations?]. Unlike the militant atheists I do not think people are stupid if they believe in God. For vast numbers of ordinary, thoughtful people it is impossible not to. Of course, this may be the result of indoctrination at a very early age – but it may also be a considered reluctance to accept that the material world is all there is.7
In Anderson’s fairytale, the Emperor allows himself to be deceived by the swindlers who sell him a delusion of grandeur. In the case of the new atheism, it is the Emperor (Dawkins) who is both selling and buying his own delusion. Dawkins’ atheism rests upon self-contradictory claims about rationality, morality and responsibility. The Emperor of the new atheism has nothing on at all.
5. William Provine, ‘Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy?’ @ http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or161/161main.htm
6. Dawkins, Richard, quoted by Beauregard, Mario & O’Leary, Denyse, The Spiritual Brain, (New York: Harper One, 2007), p. 118
7. Humphrys, John, In God We Doubt, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007), pp. 16–17
I am sure you are going to want to go and read the complete article, and you can do so by visiting the linked EPS blog post, or by heading to the following page, where you can read the article in full (in HTML)… HERE (I also believe this can be downloaded as a PDF)!
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