Book Plunge: How To Be An Atheist

[Apologiaphoenix]

What do I think of Mitch Stokes's book?

The link can be found here.

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What do I think of Mitch Stokes's book published by Crossway? Let's plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Many atheists have long said it is time to move past religion. We need to be people of reason and evidence. (As if in all the history of religion no one ever thought about those) Once we don't act so gullible and accept these religious beliefs, we will instead find some beliefs that stand up to scrutiny. We will see science bringing us into a brave new world.

Or will we?

Now to be fair, not all atheists have fallen for the myth of scientism, but a good deal have. They will not fall for the beliefs put out by religious people. (Although speaking historically, they will be gullible with regard to the existence of Jesus and believe the Christ myth theory wholeheartedly quite often) They believe in following the evidence where it leads.

Stokes challenges that and he does that by suggesting the atheists apply their skepticism and standards to the science they love so much. The book is divided into two parts. Those are science and morality. In the first, Stokes looks at claims related to science and asks if it can really deliver the goods that we are often promised it will.

Now no doubt, we owe much good to science, but the problem with scientism is that it says all good is owed to science and only science can tell us the truth. Stokes relies largely on Hume pointing out that by scientific standards, you can't detect basic ideas like even causality. You do not see cause taking place. You assume some connection that cannot be detected.

For instance, you see a brick fly through a window. You see the brick shattering the window and think that that means that the brick shattered the window. That makes sense, but does it follow? We could point out that Hume said that a stone falling when dropped 1,000 times does not mean that it is going to fall when dropped the next time. The same applies for the brick and the window.

Science can tell us about events that happen and can give us some functional truth, but can we know it's ultimately true? We could all be brains in a vat after all. In fact, science does not give us ultimate and absolute knowledge as it can be overturned at any time. Sometimes, this is much harder to do as Stokes points out, looking at the work of Kuhn mainly.

In the end, it looks like science doesn't deliver the good of absolute truth. In the end, the atheist needs to frankly say he doesn't know Unfortunately, this also means for him that science cannot disprove God. Yes. It could be that new atheists proudly proclaiming the death of God with science are just wrong.

What about morality? Stokes starts off by dealing with the supposed claim that we are saying that atheists cannot be good people. Not at all. What is said is that this goodness is often assumed to be a given in the universe. Yet how can we detect goodness? How can we have a standard of it? Stokes points out that Harris regularly just begs the question in arguing for his theory. I did wish Stokes had quoted Ruse's review here, but that did not happen.

To get to the point, in the end, Stokes argues that atheism doesn't really have a coherent theory of morality yet and it will ultimately boil down to nihilism. Therefore, to be a consistent atheist, you will need to be doubtful of knowledge and need to be a moral nihilist.

Or could it be atheists just aren't really being consistent? Of course, we could say none of us are fully consistent, but we need to ask more if it is the case that our beliefs are not consistent or if we are not consistent with them? There is a world of difference.

Stokes's book is written on a lay-level, though it could be a little bit deep at times. Still, it does give food for thought and is something worth thinking about. I would like to see one coming out sometime on historical claims as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

[Starlight]

This book looks like something I would be potentially interested in reading - getting challenged by difficult philosophical questions and constantly critically re-examining my own views is something I love doing, and I did a degree in philosophy almost solely for that reason. But books on this topic often have a habit of preaching-to-the-choir.

We could all be brains in a vat after all.

We could, I think some form of this is the most likely possibility. I've been thinking of starting a thread on this. Because many non-religious people think that the world could essentially be a "virtual reality computer game". Elon Musk, for example, recently said he thinks the odds of that not being the case are "one in billions". I guess I think that's the most likely option too, as do plenty of other people I know who would call themselves atheists. There are a few other creative possibilities that I also can't disprove and think might be quite possible (ie > 1% likelihood to my mind).

Would you consider that "not atheism"? Is it just a matter of semantics, and if I called myself an "agnostic" would you be happier? I think the evidence that we have implies that there is no supernatural entity who intervenes in the universe, and I think that the various human religions are nonsensical or self-contradictory or silly, and thus I think we have enough evidence to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that "theism is false" and thus I am an "atheist" where the a-prefix means 'not'. So I'm not a person who simply says "I don't know", I'm a person who thinks the evidence we have meets a decent standard to cause us to discard theism as a serious possibility.

Stokes argues that atheism doesn't really have a coherent theory of morality yet and it will ultimately boil down to nihilism.

Really? This again?

Theism doesn't win any prizes when it comes to morality. Since Socrates, philosophers have regarded religious attempts to make God the source of morality as either incoherent or might-makes-right. I think easily a majority of philosophers today would reject the idea that religion can offer a philosophically-sound basis for morality.

I've not read Harris' book, but he seems a bit unusual as far as atheists go in terms of he thinks the morality of actions lies in the consequences of the action rather than in the positive or negative intentions behind it and the value placed on others that motivated the action.

I gave a fairly thorough explanation of how I think most atheists tend to conceptualize morality and how it works in a series of posts recently: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
(An almost identical discussion occurred in another thread, beginning with this post if anyone wants to read me phrasing the same ideas differently / answering different questions about them)