Author: Ophelia Benson

The point of the theist four-step post was to note that theists tend to think the four beliefs are one – that the belief that there is an X we call ‘God’ includes other beliefs, especially the three cited.

My real point was to emphasize that they are separate beliefs, not one and not necessarily or automatically linked; that they all have to be evaluated, not just the first; that there’s no obvious reason to assume that if ‘God’ does exist it is good (in a sense we understand) (or any other either) or wants us to be good or that we reliably know any of that.

It is worth emphasizing that, because it is somewhat remarkable how often it gets overlooked, how often the discussion is just about exist/not exist while goodness is taken for granted. It’s a very strange thing to take for granted, given the realities of animal life. It’s not at all a strange thing to hope for, to long for, to wish for, but it’s a very strange thing to assume. In a way it would make far more sense to believe there is a God and spend all one’s time imploring it to be kinder. It would make more sense for people to sit around in churches shouting up at God ‘Why are you such a bastard? Give us a break! Have a heart!’ Churches and mosques should be full of pictures of mass slaughters, everything from genocides to tsunamis and earthquakes and droughts, all captioned ‘Why? Why, God, why? Why are you such a shit?’ Along with those pictures would be all the others, not mass slaughters but just the plain everyday ones, which don’t hurt any less just because they’re single rather than mass. And that’s before we even start with illnesses and pain and bullying, and non-human animals. Churches and mosques ought (if they consulted reality) to be museums of suffering; holocaust museums in fact.

Of course, in a way it’s understandable that people start from the other end – from the hope and belief that there is Good in the world, which is then identified as God. It’s understandable, but all the same, it muddies the waters later on.

I knew I would be told I was setting too high a standard by talking of reliable knowledge (and meaning by it actually reliable knowledge, rather than credible or rationally defensible or arguable beliefs or guesses or intuitions). I knew that so well that when making a couple of notes on belief and reliable knowledge this morning, that was one of the notes I made – the prediction that I would be told that. But the high standard is exactly the point. Why would we want to set a lower standard? Why would we accept a lower standard? I can see why people want to set a lower standard for their own beliefs, and perhaps for their chosen group’s beliefs; but why everyone is supposed to accept a lower standard for certain kinds of beliefs (and not others) in general, I find more puzzling. Especially because the claims we are supposed to accept a lower standard for – a lower standard for defining what reliable knowledge is, remember – are so very large and detailed (albeit conflicting) and unlikely. It is not obvious that the larger and wilder the claim is, the lower the standard for defining reliable knowledge should be. On the contrary. The larger and wilder the claim is, the more we want to know how the person making the claim knows – except, apparently, when it comes to whether ‘God’ exists and whether it is good and what it wants us to do to be good. But that’s just the kind of claim we need reliable knowledge of, and if we don’t have it, we need to be very damn cautious about heeding claims on the subject.

Notice I’m not saying this rules out belief; it obviously doesn’t. But belief isn’t knowledge, and shouldn’t be treated like knowledge. I maintain that it’s not setting too high a standard for reliable knowledge to say that it should be genuinely reliable knowledge. Otherwise it’s not reliable knowledge, and we should talk about something else; but what I’m talking about here is reliable knowledge, so I’m going to define it accordingly, not in some more relaxed way. That’s why I brought it up in the first place. I wanted to point out that we don’t actually have any reliable knowledge on this subject. (Reliable knowledge is a very scarce commodity. Very scarce indeed. But that’s why it’s as well to be modest when making assertions from incomplete knowledge. Assertions about God and what God wants us to do to be good are not always notably modest.)

Yes yes yes. We know. We’ve heard.

But some now say secularists should embrace more than the strident rhetoric poured out in such books as “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris. By devoting so much space to explaining why religion is bad, these critics argue, atheists leave little room for explaining how a godless worldview can be good. At a recent conference marking the 30th anniversary of Harvard’s humanist chaplaincy, organizers sought to distance the “new humanism” from the “new atheism.” Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein went so far as to use the (other) f-word in describing his unbelieving brethren. “At times they’ve made statements that sound really problematic, and when Sam Harris says science must destroy religion, to me that sounds dangerously close to fundamentalism,” Epstein said in an interview after the meeting.

And behold, it worked – here he is with his name in the Washington Post. It’s a way to get attention, and Harvard’s ‘Humanist chaplain’ has been getting it. That’s a shame.

Atheism’s new dogmatic streak is not that different from the religious extremists it calls to task…The suggestion that atheists may be fundamentalists in their own right has, unsurprisingly, ruffled feathers. “We’re not a unified group,” said Christopher Hitchens…”But we’re of one mind on this: The only thing that counts is free inquiry, science, research, the testing of evidence, the uses of reason…

Free inquiry, science, research, the testing of evidence, the uses of reason – what could be more dogmatic than that?

The humanists are taking advantage of renewed interest in atheism — in effect riding the coattails of Dawkins and Harris into the mainstream — to gain attention for their big-tent model.

And doing it by pissing on them, and doing that by saying things about them that are not accurate. Triply contemptible – hitching a ride and pissing on the drivers by calling them names that don’t fit.

The article talks to much better people as it goes on, but I do wish journalists would get around to ignoring Greg Epstein.