Random Thoughts on the New Atheists

The New Atheists and the Death of Philosophy (Part 1?)

I was welcomed into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil Mass in 2014. Prior to becoming Catholic, my journey was a complicated mess that can be understood as dodging the most important question of all: what are my duties if there is a God? I dodged that question even when I had my first slow conversion from being an agnostic to coming to believe in God and stumbling through an equivalent of the 'Sinner's Prayer' in the mid-2000s. The way I lived my life didn't change, meaning that I had intellectualized belief but did not change to have my life reflect my beliefs. I spent a lot of time not thinking about God or what my duties were. Not thinking about this issue is very, very common.

After coming into the Church I tried to read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. I wanted to throw the book across the room several times because of how intellectually lazy the work was. I have a lot of gripes with the book but the majority of them can be summed up under the heading of 'the death of philosophy.' Dawkins and his cohorts in the 4 Donkeys of the Atheist Apocalypse or whatever they get called typically ignore philosophy altogether and instead engage in scientism, which can be defined as the application of the scientific method outside its proper sphere. Bishop Robert Barron has a great video on this subject. 

For centuries the existence of God was debated by the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas and atheists like David Hume and John Stuart Mill. David Humewould have none of the garbage peddled by the new atheists and for good reason. Hume's famous Problem of Induction torpedoes the entire New Atheist project of applying scientific methods outside of science, which is likely why he and other philosophers are ignored by the polemicists like Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens (whose brother Peter I strongly prefer despite his proud Protestantism, Daniel Dennett and the rest. The 4 Donkey Riders use science to promote a matter of opinion as fact, which is fascinating because the question itself defies scientific methods in that it cannot be tested one way or another. Christopher Hitchens famously dodged this by saying untestable questions can be ignored. Cute, but not true in that the question actually is testable via philosophy, not science.

The lack of philosophical training in the American university system today is astounding and troubling. If philosophy does anything at all then it does train people to think critically. Critical thinking is out of fashion in this secular age, as evident through the lack of reflecting on the question of God. I know this from experience because dodging the question is the norm. People treat the question as irrelevant because people assume that, if a God exists then it doesn't matter how you worship Him/Her/It. The assumption seems to be that the God of the Bible is the same as the God of the Quran is the same as the God of the Nature Worshipers and that this God is a God of pure love and not judgment. It's a comforting thought as lies usually are.

Why don't people think critically about God? Why do people assert the scientistic claim instead? Because those means of understanding reality are inherently relativistic in that they do not challenge us to live our lives for a higher good. We CAN live to serve others if we so choose to but it is ultimately our own decision with no repercussions other than losing the esteem of others, which can frankly be bought. Esteem is cheap. Our feelings are cheaper. You can feel pretty good about yourself as long as you have the money to make yourself feel better, or so the logic of the culture goes. If this sounds like idolatry to you that's because it is idolatry. It is the worship of the Self.

Self worship is the national past time of the United States as well as the rest of the secular West. It is both the dark side of individualism and the logical outcome of collectivism, in that both seek exaltation of the self but have chosen different means to achieve that goal. This is largely the result of several centuries of Protestant Revolt-inspired secular philosophy that prizes a near-solipsistic view of freedom of the person above the needs of others. On the one hand, we see others as people we compete with in society; on the other hand we see them as part of a mass collective that promises to lift everyone higher through identification with some Overmind of mass humanity. The New Atheists preach hedonism laced with anger and derision aimed at dissenters because the arguments are shallow and collapse under examination. The best rebuttal I've read of this comes from Peter Hitchens's book The Rage Against God, where Hitchens argues eloquently that the rejection of God is rooted in a deep personal dislike of Him rather than in anything rational. One needs only to see the rage in the eyes of some atheists when they argue against God for evidence.