Why Do Atheists Care What Theists Believe?

If, as many "skeptical" atheists maintain, we cannot be certain about facts ("capital-T Truth") and if statements of value are subjective and noncognitive, then why should atheists care what theists believe and why they believe it? Moreover, what standing do atheists have that entitles them to talk theists out of their deeply held beliefs? If atheists want to be taken seriously, they need to grapple with these issues. Otherwise, their mission -- and many see it as a mission -- is doomed. Many theists get this, but the atheists I have in mind just plunge ahead, boasting of their edgy "skepticism."

This is a sad state of affairs for those of us who are committed to reason, logic, and objectivity in fact and value since those values are key to a humane society.

The atheists I'm thinking of seemed to be in the thrall of philosophers who have long been seriously challenged if not discredited entirely. On both counts -- fact and value -- that challenge dates back to the ancient Greeks and has been updated by many modern philosophers. To rest on the tradition of Hume (who has many merits) and the logical positivists as if nothing has happened since is a failure to keep up. Insisting on epistemological and ethical subjectivism is a mark of philosophical obsolescence; it's like basking in the light of a long-dead star. Many (most? all?) dichotomies in philosophy have long been shown to be false dichotomies: fact/value, rationalism/empiricism, analytic/synthetic, and so on. Each side of the dichotomy made similar errors, and synthesis was arbitrarily ruled out. Yet other philosophers managed to overcome the dichotomies time after time, and even the logical positivists loosened their strict criteria for scientific claims more than 50 years ago.

I discuss our access to reality here. I discuss moral objectivism here, but I want to say a wee bit more about the latter today. (I also discuss this in my new book, What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.)

I'll draw on a number thinkers who have influenced me, including Aristotle, Spinoza, Ayn Rand, Hilary Putnam ( in his book The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and this video), Roderick T. Long (in Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand, his review of Putnam, and his critique of Leland Yeager's defense of utilitarianism), and others. (Although I've only just started to familiarize myself with his work, I should mention W.V.O. Quine in this connection since his writing, specifically, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," more than 60 years ago was so important to the demolition of the analytic/synthetic dichotomy and of logical positivism in general.)

I'll make two brief points. 

First, statements of value, as these philosophers persuasively argue, are not unlike statements of fact, despite what many people think. For one thing, they can be argued about rationally and meaningfully -- indeed, we do this all the time. Value statements can even be put into syllogisms, e.g.: 

Rational social beings ought to value that which promotes their flourishing; 

X promotes the flourishing of rational social beings;

Therefore rational social beings ought value X. 

Who says you can't get an ought from an is?

For another thing, value statements can be tested empirically. Really? How so? By looking at how groups and individuals have fared under the sway of various value systems. We can do that by looking at today's world and by studying history. 

For still another, science as a truth-seeking endeavor necessarily rests on epistemic values: the scientific method, honesty, coherence, Occam's simplicity, transparency, tolerance of dissent, etc. These are normative principles. "Any claim to factual knowledge that we possess must rely on principles of belief-justification and theory choice that are themselves normative," Long writes. Can there be no rational commitment to those values over their supposed competing principles? We can't merely observe that they tend to produce knowledge because that would be question-begging: how do we know those principles produce knowledge independent of them? It's not as though you could confirm their work without them.

As Putnam says, science without that value foundation would be nonsense. If normative statements are merely nonrational emotional outbursts, you can say goodbye to science as we like to think of it.

Second, knowledge claims are, Putnam says, "entangled" with value claims. Take the concept courage. We may try to define courage merely as the willingness to act in the face of danger. But can we leave it at that? Long says we have no problem calling a person courageous for rushing into a burning building to save his child. But what about someone who rushes in to save his ham sandwich? No, that's foolhardy, not courageous. Courage must have a value dimension.

Some prominent atheists point out -- correctly -- that nature is neither intrinsically good nor bad. That was Spinoza's path-breaking insight, and it is irrefutable. But that does not mean that things can't be objectively good and bad for human beings. Like everything else, human beings have a nature. So it follows that there are objective goods and bads for us -- things that are compatible and incompatible with our nature independent of what we may believe. (That doesn't rule out a wide range of compatible goods and ways of living. It just rules out subjectivism.)

I've heard the "skeptical" atheists say things that I too believe, namely, that the proper standard of secular morality is human well-being, or flourishing. I would caution, however, that if this standard is not offered as objective, on grounds is it called proper? What does it mean to say that an approach to morality is best if value statements are merely subjective and hence arbitrary? Why should anyone care about human well-being? If the skeptical atheists declare their purpose to be the reduction of violence, bigotry, etc., why are that deemed a worthwhile end? Is it subjective and arbitrary? If they give a utilitarian reply, we may ask why the greatest good for the greatest number is a proper standard. One cannot escape the demands of objectivity.

Aristotle and the eudaimonists, or virtue-ethicists, have good answers to such questions: the aim of human flourishing is baked into the very logic of means-ends human action. When we act we necessarily do so either directly or indirectly in pursuit of "the good" as we individually conceive it. This is what it means to act, adopt means to obtain some end. Therefore when we act in ways that objectively undermine our prospects of flourishing, we have chosen a mistaken means to that ultimate end. As for our dealings with other people, relations based on reason -- and therefore persuasion and consent -- i.e., respect for others as ends in themselves (and not mere means to our own ends) is constitutive of the good life and not merely instrumental and contingent. "Those who are governed by reason," Spinoza wrote, "desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind." The rational person selfishly wants to be surrounded by free and rational people.

The point is that objectivity about values is possible just as it is possible about the rest of the world, even if it takes a bit of work. Since we're not omniscient, understanding does require effort, which is why we need the guidance of reason and logic. These constitute the method of obtaining knowledge for fallible beings. 

Strangely, the atheists I'm thinking of often talk as though reality is cognitively accessible and morality is objective -- but they usually do so only when they aren't talking about epistemology and ethics explicitly. When they do address those subjects explicitly, they sound like epistemological and moral skeptics. They really need to listen to themselves the rest of the time.