The Logical Atheist

This morning I enjoyed watching Robert Mayhew's lecture "Ayn Rand's Intransigent Atheism," which was given at last summer's Objectivist Conference, or OCON. In this examination of the cosmological argument, he says much of what I've tried to say on this blog. Mayhew, a professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University, points out that Ayn Rand called herself an "intransigent" but not a "militant" atheist. Her objective was not, in a primary sense, to argue against or reject belief in God, but to affirm reason as the only method of obtaining knowledge about what exists. One who is fully committed to reason is necessarily an atheist because no room is left for what people mean by God . Her use of the word intransigence indicated that the claims of theism could simply be dismissed as empty nonsense because they misuse the language by ignoring basic metaphysical truths that cannot be escaped without self-contradiction. Rand's orientation i...

Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described so that a concept of him was made possible to human thought. --Annie Besant, "Why I Do Not Believe in God" (1887)

That question may not be as straightforward as it seems. I could rephrase it like this: do atheists seek a world without God-believers full stop or a world of rationalists? (I don't mean rationalists as opposed to empiricists, but those who govern themselves by reason, which includes sensory evidence). Alas, mere nonbelief and rationalism don't necessarily go hand in hand. Irrational atheists are not impossible.  Online celebrity atheists, who fancy themselves skeptics, claim the title negative atheists , by which they mean that with regard to God (as supernatural creator of the universe), they merely lack belief for want of convincing evidence. Their aim is to distinguish themselves from positive atheists , who are convinced that no God exists.  Negative atheists insist that their form of atheism need entail no other beliefs about anything. It's a mere lack of a particular belief. But that can't be true because they also believe that one ought to have evidence for all...

In the span of a one-hour program a well-known American atheist celebrity made two contradictory points: 1) that atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief in God and 2) that to exist in a supernatural respect is indistinguishable from not existing at all (my position). He expressed the second point rather well, especially since he typically refuses to assert that God does not exist because that would to impose on himself the burden of proof, which he strives never to do. I say points are contradictory because the idea supernatural is intrinsic to the idea God (or gods ). A thoroughly natural God would make no sense whatever. (Superman, recall, was not a supernatural being but simply a "strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." No one in Metropolis mistook him for God. Hmm, did Superman believe in God?) So I don't think one can coherently say that atheism is nothing more than nonbelief (i.e., ...

"You can't tell the players without a scorecard." That's what vendors used to shout at major league baseball games to sell programs. The same could be said about the broad atheist community. The terms have multiplied, so you need a guide to keep them straight.  On side side we have what have been variously called negative atheists, soft atheists, and weak atheists. These are atheists who do not believe in God or gods, mostly because they have yet to see convincing evidence. (When I write God  I'm including any sort of supernatural thing.) But they won't say they believe no God exists. Some on this side call themselves skeptical atheists. I would call them evidentialist atheists. On the other side we have, correspondingly, positive atheists, hard atheists, or strong atheists. They not only do not believe in God, they believe no such thing exists. They go beyond a-theism, mere nonbelief. (See Wikipedia's  scorecard .) Things get a little confusing because on...