The Logical Atheist

I sadly must report the death of George H. Smith on April 8. He was 73 and had been in poor health. Smith will be no stranger to readers of this blog, which was inspired by his writings. I was fortunate to have known George since the 1970s and to have had many conversations with him. He was self-educated and nothing short of brilliant. He wrote perhaps the best book ever on why belief in gods or God is not just mistaken but illogical: Atheism: The Case against God  (1974). (The 2016 edition has a foreword by Lawrence Krauss.) Smith wrote two other books that deal with the philosophy and history of freethought: Why Atheism?  (2000) and Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies (1991) .  He also wrote dozens of essays on the intellectual history of individualism, liberty, and anarchism. Many of these can be found at Libertarianism.org . Some of his essays have been compiled as books, available at Amazon .  As I've pointed out often , Smith's work in my view is far superior...

When will the "skeptical" atheists, who seem to value doubt more than reason, get it? Explanation presupposes existence , not vice versa. How could it be otherwise? How could one imagine anything being the explanation for or cause  everything? If it were explanatory, it would have to exist in its own right and hence be part of existence. Or perhaps it created itself? Yet how could that be? It would defy logic.  Yet atheists who strike the skeptic's pose proudly declare that they do not know why existence exists -- as though it could do anything else. They would rather be ignorant than logical. That makes no sense. "The natural universe sets the context in which explanation is possible," George H. Smith writes in  Atheism: The Case Against God , "so the concept of explanation cannot legitimately be extended to the universe as a whole."

The contingency argument is generally considered to be the most sophisticated of the cosmological proofs for the existence of a god. Its structure is similar to the causal argument, but it attempts to establish the existence of a "necessary being" [which is said to be required by the fact that everything else is contingent on something else] rather than a first cause....   While we do observe causal dependency of specific entities within the universe, we do not observe a similar dependency with regard to matter itself. We do not observe the creation or annihilation of matter, so the claim that the universe as a whole is contingent cannot be supported by factual evidence. On the contrary, empirical evidence points to matter as a metaphysical primary, which cuts the ground from under any attempt to establish the contingency of the universe by empirical means.... Finally we should mention the underlying dogma of the contingency argument: the so-called "principle of sufficie...

We must ask if this "principle of universal doubt" is itself certain, or is it open to doubt as well? If it is known with certainty, at least one thing is beyond doubt, which makes the principle false. If, however, the principle is open to doubt --  i.e. , if it is not certain -- then on what grounds can the skeptic claim greater plausibility for his theory than any other other? --George H. Smith,  Atheism: The Case Against God , 1974

We must note the main source of confusion in the skeptical approach: the equation of knowledge and certainty with infallibility . When the skeptic claims that every knowledge claim should be doubted because man is capable of making mistakes, he is simply pointing out the obvious: that man is a fallible being. No one, not even the most resolute antiskeptic, will deny the point that man is fallible. (We must wonder, though, how the skeptic arrived at this knowledge. Is he certain  that man is fallible?)    The skeptic fails to realize that it precisely man's fallibility that generates the need for a science of knowledge. If man were infallible -- if all knowledge were given to him without the slightest possibility of error -- then the need for epistemological guidelines with which to verify ideas, with which to sort the true from the false, would not arise....  The skeptic ... starts from the same premise -- that man is fallible -- and uses it to argue that man can nev...

Contrary to what many people think, the intellectuals known as the New Atheists pull their punches in their case against theism. Indeed, because they promote a philosophically watered-down version of atheism, they are way too easy on religious believers. While engaged in a worthwhile cause, they go about it in a weak and self-subverting way. How so? By giving undeserved credit to their religious opponents. They could pull the rug right out from under them, but they don’t do it. Too bad. Here’s a typical example: in an interview with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Ron Reagan said this about his lack of belief in God: “You show me evidence, I’ll reconsider, but in the absence of evidence I do not believe.” You can find similar statements from the late Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins , Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Matt Dillahunty,* Aron Ra,** and many others, all of whom I respect. Dawkins, a biologist, for example, writes, in The God Delusion , “The existence of God is a sc...

If the word  dogma  denotes a set of first principles that cannot be questioned, then not all dogmas are bad. For good or ill, the word is a pejorative for many people, although it's all right for some religious folks. But atheists ought to realize they have a dogma too. No, not in the sense that the theists think. The atheists's dogma is -- or should be -- logic. The laws of logic -- Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle -- are first principles that cannot be questioned -- without question-begging. Any argument against them would have to employ them if it was to qualify as an argument. (This is true of the senses also. You have to use sensory evidence in trying to make a case against sensory evidence.) Therefore, the laws are self-evident axioms, which means they cannot be rationally questioned. It also means they cannot be proved because they are what make the idea proof  coherent and possible. Any attempt to show that these laws -- A is A; nothing can be both...